


Bloody New World

by Legendgrass



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Cussing, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Gritty, Medium Burn, Minutemen path, Romance, pessimism, playthrough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:33:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 47,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27123233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendgrass/pseuds/Legendgrass
Summary: Usually when a stranger asked Tuesday tostep up to my office,she’d decline out of fear for her life, her virtue, or maybe both, but something about this girl was different; profoundly trustworthy.She had a good feeling about Piper Wright.
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Piper Wright
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> usually I skip right over the 'snippets of my playthrough of x game' fics because who really cares, but here I am doing it anyway

The new reality of the post-war Commonwealth didn’t seem quite real until Tuesday Mackevicius laid eyes on Diamond City.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected upon first hearing the name, but it hadn’t been _this._

Diamond City was a _baseball_ diamond—one she’d visited on occasion, before. From what she could see on the near horizon, what had once been Fenway Park was surprisingly intact. The wall was…well, it was still huge and green, if faded from two hundred years without much care, and some of the stadium lights were operational. _How,_ she could not comprehend. But it was a little lasting piece of the world she used to know, and it made her want to breathe a sigh of relief—or throw up; she couldn’t really tell which considering the state she was in.

The ramshackle towers twisting into the sky in and around the stadium were new. They were illuminated from below by the stadium lights and shined like a beacon across the treacherous expanse of the Commonwealth still between it and her. They provided her a target; a goal, and that was the only thing motivating her to keep putting one foot in front of the other after her hell of a trip thus far.

If only she knew what she was getting into by following that light like a bug to a flame.

… 

Usually when a stranger asked Tuesday to _step up to my office_ , she’d decline out of fear for her life, her virtue, or maybe both, but something about this girl was different; profoundly trustworthy. The vault dweller had found herself unexpectedly charmed by the reporter’s firecracker performance at the gate. She seemed like a novelty around here based on what Tuesday had seen of the Commonwealth so far; most folks seemed only to be passionate about one thing: surviving. Piper Wright, though, had a heart for the truth. The way her voice changed so quickly from abrasive to thoughtful when she aimed it at Tuesday, too, hinted that there was more to her than just a nosy rabble rouser. The vault dweller wanted to know more about her just as much as vice versa. Plus she ought to thank her, probably, for being her ticket into the city in the first place.

That’s how she found herself here, standing in the carpeted loft of Publick Occurrences that she’d just realized was as much Piper’s bedroom as it was her office. That fact made her a little shy, and she kept near to the door as the reporter grilled her cheerfully for her ‘story of the century,’ as she’d called it.

Piper’s questions were blunt but not rude, and Tuesday answered them with the pinch of evasiveness that she’d picked up as a courtroom habit. The truth was she couldn’t be fully sure who to trust just yet, whether or not her first impression of Piper had been a favorable one. 

After the interview, the reporter thanked her, expressed how excited she was about her story of the century, and Tuesday figured that would be the end of it. Except, Piper was still looking at her with a bit of a sparkle in her hazel eyes, biting her lip like she had more to say.

“One last question, papergirl?” the vault dweller prompted wryly. That was the only explanation. She must still be curious about the sole survivor of a dead world, as it were. Tuesday understood, but she also knew she was going to get very tired of everybody looking at her like she was an ancient relic; like she might just break.

“Tell you what,” Piper said instead of answering directly, her lips pursed. “Since you helped me out, I owe you one. How about I…come with you? Watch your back while you get used to the world above ground.” She swung her arms and tilted her head awkwardly, eyes down like she was bashful of even suggesting it. Her next words reinforced that notion. “If you want me to, that is.”

Tuesday had enough practice reading people in the courtroom that she could tell at once what Piper was feeling. _Insecure._ And by the way she’d seen the other Diamond City residents treat her—locking her out, calling her names, brushing her off—Tuesday could absolutely understand why.

She resolved within herself to be different to this girl. To give her a chance. Even if at first glance she seemed to be just a pushy papergirl, first glances were rarely the most astute. Tuesday was willing to look a little harder, if just to sprinkle some uncommon kindness into this unkind world. Plus, it couldn’t hurt to have someone watching her back out there. Lord knew she wouldn’t last long otherwise. So, “Okay, Piper,” she agreed warmly, smiling when the younger woman’s eyes shot up in subtle surprise. “Why don’t you come with me now?”

“Now?” Piper echoed, brows climbing incredulously. “Like, _now,_ now?”

“You’re offering, aren’t you?”

“Yeah!” the reporter blurted just a tad too loud. “I just—didn’t really expect you to take me up on that.” Her voice fell on the last words, as if she were speaking to herself. Then she raised her notepad. “Let me get this story in the works, and then I’m all yours.” The crooked, hesitant grin that she shot Tuesday was many-layered: surprise, nervousness and excitement all packaged into one look.

Though the vault dweller had no clue whether Piper was as good with a gun as she supposedly was with a pen, she felt her heart bolstered by the girl’s earnest reaction alone.

She had a good feeling about Piper Wright.

… 

Piper had a good feeling about Tuesday Mackevicius.

She was a generous purveyor of common decency, which had long become uncommon. Without even asking for a reward, she’d given the local bum a cola, rescued some settlers who were being harassed by raiders, jumped in to defend a team of Brotherhood meatheads she didn’t even know, gotten into a fistfight for Travis; the list went on and on. Piper found herself admiring this stranger more every day. The way she so willingly sacrificed her own time, effort and safety for others was at once profoundly touching and slightly concerning. The woman she’d come to think of as Blue wasn’t special just because she was a relic from a lost age, but because she was genuinely _good_ in a world that was, well, not.

Piper had no idea how she did it. She ought to be in shock in the wake of what had happened to her (having one’s entire life turned upside down tended to do that), or in mourning, or stuck in a fit of rage, but she seemed…focused. Unwavering. Almost uncannily so. Maybe that was her secret: with a pressing goal in mind, she could put off thinking about _everything_ _else_ for a while _._ It could only work for so long, though.

During her days traveling with the Woman Out of Time, Piper could see moments where Blue’s laser focus on a mission faltered and her inner turmoil showed through the cracks. She would go quiet; distant, her gray eyes darkening to a stormy shade that hinted at the demons she was fighting where no one else could see. Piper worried for her; wanted to get her to open up and _talk_ to her because maybe it would help, but the truth was she barely knew this woman. Blue owed her no explanations, and even if she did decide to open up, Piper would have no idea what to say in return. _Sorry the entire world you knew got blown up_ or _it stinks that you were locked in a fridge for two hundred years_ or _I can’t imagine what it must be like to watch your family get shot and kidnapped_ didn’t exactly do it for her.

So Piper simply made herself available; watched Blue’s back like a hawk and did everything she could to keep the woman safe while she chased after her goals. She distracted her, sometimes, too, with little remarks meant to ease the tension or a sweet treat to keep her strength up. She wanted to _help,_ because Blue’s character was a novelty worth preserving, but for the moment this was all she could do. This and the paper, which would hopefully win her some sympathizers in the long run.

Piper just hoped it would be enough.

…

  
  


The first hostile encampment they intentionally braved together was the Corvega assembly plant on a hill north of Diamond City. Tuesday had been there before, recently enough that the machine gun turret and the guards out front hadn’t yet been replaced, but the inside was still crawling with men with ill intentions.

“I was underprepared before,” Tuesday explained at a whisper as they passed the shell of the exploded turret and slunk up to the main doors. She was in her power armor now (she hadn’t given Piper the scoop on that, yet) and her hunting rifle was fully loaded. She pressed an ear to the crack between the doors to listen for enemies beyond. When it was quiet, she added, “Almost died.”

Piper’s wide eyes looked dark in the nighttime as they flicked to her. “Blue!” she whispered fiercely, retroactively concerned. Tuesday found it a little endearing. “Too bad you didn’t find me sooner.”

“Yeah,” the vault dweller agreed with complete seriousness, meeting that well-meaning gaze. “It is.” Maybe her comment came across a little flirty, but what she was really getting at was that she truly was better off with Piper. They’d only been on the road together for about a week, but already Tuesday felt as if the nosy reporter was becoming a permanent fixture in her life. Piper had ended up being a pretty good shot (“You’ve got my dad to thank for that,” she’d smiled sadly), and had already kept her promise to watch Tuesday’s back out here in the wasteland more than a few times. It wasn’t just her trigger finger that was rising in Tuesday’s good graces, however; her simple companionship meant more than either of them could have imagined. With no Nate, no Shaun, and no recognizable ties to her old life remaining, Tuesday would have been adrift without something to hold onto. If that something happened to be Piper, well, maybe that wasn’t the healthiest thing, but it wasn’t the worst, either. Tuesday found that she rather enjoyed the way Piper cornered unsuspecting passersby for bits and pieces of a story, or the way she popped candy like chems and seemed to have an overflowing supply of nervous energy because of it. Whenever they failed to reach a settlement before dark and had to camp out in the nearest blown-out ruin, Tuesday fell asleep to the reporter’s pen tapping hypnotically against the nearest surface, and when she woke she often found her with her notepad open on her stomach, notes scribbled in wavering lines in the dark. The way Piper lived and breathed the press—the _truth_ —was maybe her most intriguing quality. Tuesday hadn’t met anybody yet whose dedication to a cause was so complete (except maybe Paladin Danse, who was so stiff about it that his loyalty seemed almost robotic), or half as noble. Piper was unique in this place, and Tuesday liked that about her. A lot. With every passing day she became more glad that she’d taken the papergirl up on her offer to help.

Now was no different. Piper was at her side, pistol in hand, as had become their norm; ready to face the danger behind this door. In the glow of the floodlight above, it almost looked like she was blushing in the wake of Tuesday’s admission. Or maybe she was just nervous for the fight.

“Let’s do this,” Tuesday hissed before she could think too long on that detail, and the two of them ducked into the plant in search of a different kind of trouble.

… 

“Why didn’t anything _nice_ get mutated into a huge two-headed version of itself?” Tuesday grumbed to herself as she stood over the husk of a just-killed mirelurk, dark viscera still dripping from her bladed tire iron onto the Cambridge cobblestones.

“Nice?” echoed Piper, and the vault dweller wondered abruptly whether this girl had any idea what a _nice_ animal looked like, besides Dogmeat.

“Yeah,” she went on, a little more carefully. “What I wouldn’t give to see a big, fluffy kitten or something instead of just nasty slimy monsters everywhere.”

Piper snorted and returned lightheartedly, “What makes you think a kitten wouldn’t try to kill you too?”

“I’m just saying,” sighed Tuesday, “I wish everything weren’t so…dangerous, now.”

Piper seemed to realize that they had wandered onto a tender topic and tried to steer her friend toward something more comfortable. “Hey.” She bumped the survivor’s shoulder with her own and Tuesday raised her eyes from the ugly body of the mirelurk. “We’ve got Dogmeat. And, um…” She glanced upward and pursed her lips in thought. Then her brows shot up. “That cat that hangs around Diamond City!” 

Tuesday had been mostly joking when she’d used kittens as an example, but now at the prospect of seeing an actual familiar domestic creature she perked up. “There’s a cat? I haven’t seen it.”

Piper leveled a grin at her. “Well, then we’ll just have to find him when we get home.”

_Home_ hit Tuesday unexpectedly hard, but she tried to keep her emotion from showing. She hadn’t really been able to think of anywhere as home, since… 

But thinking of Diamond City as home wasn’t totally out of the question, given a little more time. Especially if Piper was there. Dependable constant as the reporter had become in the topsy-turvy hell of Tuesday’s new life, wherever Piper was had begun to feel the most like home. That thought was as frightening as it was comforting, but it brought a smile to Tuesday’s face that she didn’t try to resist.

“Okay, papergirl.”

…


	2. Chapter 2

“Piper, the _car!_ ”

Tuesday’s yell caught the reporter’s attention in time for her to whip her dark head around and meet her companion’s eyes with suddenly dawning understanding and horror, but not in time for her to get away from the vehicle she’d been taking cover behind—the one that was about to _explode_.

One too many hits from a Super Mutant’s rifle had caught the thing on fire, and Piper had been too occupied with dodging bullets to realize in time what that meant. Tuesday, though, had a perfect view from her place behind a battered barricade across the street.

A perfect view, but not enough time. She launched into motion at the same time Piper did, intending to tackle her friend away from the brunt of the blast if she could, but neither were quick enough.

The car exploded.

“Piper!” Tuesday’s cry was drowned out by the clamor of combusting gasoline and car parts ricocheting off every nearby surface. She caught a glimpse of her companion’s figure thrown into the air by the force of the blast before black smoke filled the air and her line of sight. Over the ringing in her ears she may have heard the enemy Super Mutant down the street laugh victoriously, but she was too consumed by crippling fear to pay it any mind.

Tuesday blundered through the smokescreen amid gently falling ash particles and not-so-gently falling scrap metal, ignoring the shrapnel raining on her shoulders in favor of _getting to Piper._ She reached back to fumble in her pack for a stimpak as she crossed the street to where she thought she’d last seen her companion, praying she would need it; praying it wasn’t too late, that Piper hadn’t been too close to the blast.

“Come on, come on, please,” she wheezed out of smoke-filled lungs, blinking the sting out of her eyes to look for her friend. Debris filled the street around the remains of the car, and in the haze it all looked the same: dark and twisted and burned. Would she even be able to pick out a body from the mess? That thought made her heart race even faster until her pulse was the loudest thing she could hear.

“Piper!” Tuesday struggled to keep her voice below a hysterical shriek, but the Super Mutant was still out there, and she had to if she wanted _either_ of them to survive this. She stumbled through the debris field, half-doubled over both to avoid unkind eyes and to search the ground for signs of Piper. She was hardly getting enough air in the state of panic she was in, not to mention the smoke, and her vision was beginning to go spotty because if she didn’t _find Piper soon—_

A cough to her left made her heart leap. Tuesday sprinted toward the sound, finally able to pick out Piper’s fallen form among the rubble as the reporter moved slightly, rolling partly onto her side to cough again like she too was struggling to breathe.

Tuesday slid to her knees at Piper’s side and registered several things at once: first, the younger woman was _alive,_ thank God; second, her clothes were torn and burned from the explosion, and her exposed skin was similarly abused; and third, some of that darkness was not soot at all, but blood, and some of those wounds were full of shrapnel. One nasty gash on the back of her hip sported a whole piece of a fender sticking out of the flesh.

Tuesday’s fist went tight on the stimpak in her hand. _I can’t treat this here,_ she realized. She didn’t have the space or the cover to take care of those wounds the way she needed to, especially considering the healing might be a _very_ painful process and there were still enemies lurking nearby.

She bent over Piper until the reporter’s hazel eyes slid to hers and registered her presence, then whispered, “Piper, I’m going to have to move you.”

The girl let out a cough and a groan, furrowing her brows and looking like she very much did not like that idea, but Tuesday shushed her gently. She hated seeing her friend this way. She hated that she could basically _feel_ how much the raw pink burns on her cheek and the shrapnel in her back must have hurt, but she couldn’t _do_ anything about it yet.

_Yet._ She had to get Piper out of here. “I can fix this, but not here. It isn’t safe.”

Piper made a miserable sound deep in her throat, and the look in her eyes was _heartrending_ but Tuesday didn’t have much choice. She took a deep breath and stowed the stimpak in her pack again before wiping her freed hands on her pants—not that it would make much difference since Piper was already blackened head to toe from the blast, but it was a compulsion.

“Okay,” she breathed mostly to herself in preparation, eyeing Piper’s form for the best way to lift her without seriously exacerbating her injuries. She was already lying mostly on her back, only canted slightly to keep the weight off of her hip wound, and the worst of her injuries seemed to be concentrated on her left back. “Okay,” she repeated, thinking she’d probably figured out a way. In any case, the smoke was clearing, and they had to get out of here before they were spotted by the Super Mutant or any other unfriendly who may have been drawn by the noise. 

Tuesday threw a nervous glance behind her to scan for any such enemies and didn’t see any in their immediate vicinity. Something did catch her eye, however: the limp dark shape of Piper’s press cap, thrown from her head in the explosion and now resting a few feet away on top of a sunken tire. Tuesday crawled the short distance to it and snatched it up out of a sense of obligation. Having nowhere better to put it for the short term, she pulled it onto her own head as she crawled back.

Then, “All right. Hold on, papergirl,” she murmured as she reached for Piper’s battered body, sliding a careful arm under her upper legs and behind her back so she could lift her from the asphalt. Piper whimpered at the strain on her wounds, but didn't struggle as Tuesday gathered her frame and pushed herself to her feet with the reporter cradled to her front like a child. The vault dweller could _feel_ the blood seeping onto her fingers from beneath Piper’s coat immediately and decided she had best start moving _now_.

She hurried as best as she could while carrying a heavy pack, a heavier girl, and also trying to remain quiet as she traversed the rubble-strewn street to bring them around a corner from the blown-out car. Tuesday was praying for the block beyond to be devoid of enemies, and though she could see a gruesome raider blockade further along, their immediate surroundings looked relatively safe. She ducked into the first sheltered building she could find: a half-caved-in bookstore where all that remained of the books was ash. Inside was too filled with rubble to house any lurking threats, but for the two of them it was enough. Tuesday lowered Piper down against a leaning bookcase and returned to the door to pull a second shelf in front of it, just to provide a bit of extra protection.

Then she was free to brush her hands clean again and return to her companion’s side, pulling out a stimpak again, plus a Med-X syringe. She laid the stimpak beside her knee while she bent over Piper with the Med-X, pulling back her sleeve to expose a vein. Piper’s eyes followed her motion, but she made no protest past the sound of her labored breathing. She knew she needed this. Blood was pooling on the dirty tiles under her hip. Her face was pale under the soot.

Tuesday grimaced with sympathy as she administered the Med-X and then reached to turn Piper over slightly so she could get at the shrapnel. Running her eyes over its jagged edges, she took a deep breath. “This is going to hurt,” she warned at a whisper, and Piper’s only response was to fumble for her hand until they found each other and clung on. Tuesday squeezed, but had to let go so she could attend to the wounds with both hands.

She wished for clean hands, or antiseptic solution, or bandages, or _anything_ to make this safer or easier, but this was the apocalypse. All she had was a bootleg healing concoction and sheer force of will to pull her friend through this. And she couldn’t even use that until this metal was out of her.

She had to quit stalling before Piper bled out. She reached for the first in a spray of metal shards in the reporter’s back, closed her fingers around it, and yanked.

Piper recoiled, curling around Tuesday’s knees so she could muffle her cry of pain against her companion’s body. It hardly worked, but it was all she could do.

Tuesday took a shaky breath and moved to the next piece.

This one was larger, and the way out was even worse. The blood started dripping faster. Tuesday picked up the pace.

Neither of them could tell if it was thirty seconds or thirty minutes later when Tuesday finally reached the big ugly shard in the back of Piper’s hip. This one she would pull out with one hand and shoot the stimpak in as fast as possible with the other, and then buckle down for the even more painful speed-healing process.

She met Piper’s eyes with a breed of pain of her own and rasped, “Ready?”

The papergirl only squeezed hers shut in answer.

Tuesday didn’t give herself time to psych herself out further before acting. She ripped out the metal, her heart _wrenching_ at the sick sound it made as it took Piper’s flesh with it, and jabbed the stimpak just below the wound just as fast. Piper screamed as her back arched in agony and Tuesday practically pounced on top of her to muffle the noise with her hand, heart thundering in her ears. She _so_ hoped no one had heard that.

She kept her hand over her companion’s mouth, feeling her jaw clench and unclench and her breath come quick through her nose as the stimpak did its job, knitting together flesh and purging infection in its efficient but painful process. Piper’s cries weakened to whimpers and tears slid from her tightly shut eyes as her bleeding slowed and then stopped. Tuesday remained crouched over her, pressed up against her, watching the burns on her face mend with profound relief.

They stayed like that until gradually Piper’s whimpers died and she was able to breathe again; until she raised a weak hand and guided Tuesday’s away, down, to lay against her chest instead. The relief the vault dweller felt upon sensing that heartbeat running strong beneath her hand was enough to make her knees weak. As it was, she was already kneeling, so she slumped forward instead to pull Piper into her arms. 

Her fingers found the holes in Piper’s coat and she sighed shakily at the sensation of smooth, scarred-over skin beneath rather than gaping wounds. She let her eyes slip closed as the stress of the past hour slowly dissipated to be replaced by exhaustion. In her utter relief to be holding Piper, alive and well, in her arms, she couldn’t even remember what they’d been doing before the incident.

Piper held her just as tightly, breathing steadily into the crook of her neck. Each puff sent shivers down Tuesday’s spine, and she chalked it up to the aftereffects of her nerves. Even when the reporter mumbled hoarsely, “Glad that’s over,” and her lips moved right against the vault dweller’s skin, making her absolutely _weak_. “Thank you.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” was Tuesday’s unintended response, uttered on the tail of a rush of emotion, and although it was maybe a little too raw for their relationship right now, she didn’t regret it. She couldn’t imagine what she would have done if Piper had died just a few short minutes ago. She couldn’t imagine braving the Commonwealth without her again. She couldn’t, and she didn’t want to.

Piper pulled back abruptly to look her in the eyes, hazel to gray, lips parted in surprise and maybe something else as that sentiment caught her off guard. Her fingers ran over the back of Tuesday’s neck of their own accord, skimming the shaven base of her unladylike undercut. “Y-you either, Blue,” she admitted almost shyly, dropping her eyes and her hands before the contact grew too intense. 

Tuesday let her own hands fall away too, unsure if the lost touch made her feel disappointed or relieved. When Piper looked back up with a smile, she banished those feelings in favor of enjoying the welcome sight. Those hazel eyes flickered over Tuesday’s face before raising to fix on her head, sparkling.

“Can I have my hat back now?”

…

“Are you sure you want to keep travelling with me? I wouldn’t blame you if you said no, after…” Blue was staring down at the Publick Occurrences couch cushion where she sat beside Piper’s reclining feet. _After you got hurt_ was the end to that sentence, they both knew, but the memory of the event was still a little too raw for either of them to address outright just yet. 

Piper knew just as well as Blue did that she easily could have died that day, even if the other woman tried to act offhand about saving her. Piper had saved her before, too, but usually in a less dramatic way, from a less dramatic end. The truth was, she was firmly in Blue’s debt now, so even if she didn’t want to keep travelling with her (which she did), she sort of had an obligation to. She _would_ repay this woman for all the good she’d brought into her life in just a few short weeks.

So, “Of course I’m sure, Blue,” she said firmly, nudging the vault dweller’s chin up with a knuckle so those gray eyes rose to hers (and gave her a little thrill). She debated whether to continue or if it would come across too mushy, and decided as she usually did that saying too much was better than not saying enough. “You’re my best—hell, maybe my _only_ friend out here. And I made a promise to watch your back.” She let her hand drop and her voice drop with it as she gave Blue a small, tender smile. “I’m not going to back out on you over a little scratch.”

The vault dweller reached up and twitched aside the hem of Piper’s black t-shirt. She was lying on her side on the couch, so the scar on the back of her hip was visible, ragged and pale against her tan skin. Blue ran a reflective fingertip over it and Piper tried _very_ hard to suppress her shiver. “Little scratch, huh?” the older woman echoed somberly, knowing better. Her touch lingered for a moment before she pulled back, settling against the armrest behind her with a sigh. She met Piper’s eyes again and the gray looked dark, stormy. “I’m—glad you’re with me, too. It’s better,” she admitted as if it hurt, “with someone.”

Piper knew enough about this woman by now that she understood the pain in her voice. Blue was desperate for companionship in the vacuum left by her family, naturally, but she regretted that any companion was bound to follow her into danger. Piper propped herself up on her elbow to bring herself slightly closer to the vault dweller. “I know.” She tried to communicate with those tiny words just how much she _did_ know what it was like: to lose someone; to care about someone and yet to have to remain distant in order to protect them. She _knew,_ and she _understood._ “I’m just sorry I can’t do more.”

Blue snorted, but more bitterly than humorously. Piper frowned; she hadn’t expected _that._ “There’s not much anyone can do,” Blue said, and her voice wavered under its hard edge. “You can’t go back and stop the bombs. Can’t bring my husband back. Can’t—” She halted abruptly, blew out a breath, and collected herself. When she spoke again, it was quiet: “Sorry, Piper. I don’t mean to take it out on you. It’s just…hard.” 

“Oh, Blue, I can’t imagine.” Piper may have understood the small, personal facet of Blue’s pain, but to lose one’s whole world? That, she couldn’t begin to comprehend. She was afraid even to try. And to think, that was her friend’s entire reality. One she had to face every day; every moment she spent walking this depressing hellscape that had become her prison. Piper longed to be able to _do_ something for her, but Blue was right. There wasn’t much anyone could do.

But she would still try. The reporter hesitated for a half second before reaching out to her friend and laying a comforting hand on her leg, the most readily accessible part of her body from where Piper lay. “Just know you’re not alone, okay?” she reminded gently, watching Blue’s eyes flick up to hers before falling again.

“Thanks,” the survivor intoned, a little too low, a little too flat to sound convincing. She lowered her head in the picture of defeat, but her near hand lifted to cover Piper’s. It was something, at least.

…


	3. Chapter 3

Tuesday hadn’t expected the search for Shaun to be easy, but coming back from Park Street Station with Nick Valentine safely in tow only to find out immediately that she’d have to journey out after Kellogg’s scent trail for another who-knows-how-long felt like a little much.

_A ten-year-old boy,_ Ellie Perkins had said, and though Tuesday was loath to believe that it could have been Shaun, the knot weighing in her gut like a stone knew better. It had to be him, and that had to mean that she’d already missed the first ten years of her son’s life—arguably the most important ones. She had no idea what he looked like; what he sounded like; what he acted like. Whoever Kellogg was in league with could have raised him kindly, or they could have abused him and used him like chattel. They could have even molded him into a heartless monster just like Kellogg. She had no way of knowing, and now the closer she got to finding out, the more afraid of the truth she became.

_He probably wouldn’t even recognize me,_ she thought glumly. Who was she kidding? Of course he wouldn’t! The last time he saw her, he was too small to remember anything at all. But would he know anyway? Would he be able to… _sense_ that they were family, somehow? Or had he simply been brainwashed into believing that Kellogg or some other villain was his family?

Tuesday sat in the chair in Kellogg’s secret room and buried her head in her hands. Was it even worth it to try to hunt down a son whom she didn’t know? Who didn’t know her?

If she did, would she like what she found? Or would her search end in a heartbreak worse than failure and her driving purpose in this world be tossed to the wind?

She didn’t know. And yet, what choice did she have? She’d already failed to save Nate. She would never forgive herself if she simply gave up on Shaun.

Tuesday didn’t realize she was crying until the droplets slipped down her palms and hit the floor beneath her. _No. No._ She sniffed to keep the wetness from her nose from following. The motion seemed to crack something inside of her, and once her shoulders shook the first time, she couldn't stop the silent sobs from wracking through her again and again. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands against them like she could hold the sorrow back that way, thinking that if she didn’t stop now, she never would.

She’d kept it together until now, mostly. Those first few days in Sanctuary, both before and after meeting Preston, had been the exception. The shock of stepping out of the vault to find her world destroyed; empty, barren—it had been too much, and she had lost days to lying curled up in her old house, crying out the little hydration she possessed and wondering if Nate’s old gun was still under the bed for her to use.

Codsworth had been the one to get her on her feet, surprisingly enough. He’d brought her scavenged tins of water from someplace indeterminate and begged her to take care of herself, in his roundabout way: _I have been tidying the house in preparation for your return for two hundred years, mum. Without a master, I’d have no more purpose!_

That had given Tuesday just enough of a mission to pick herself up and keep going: help Codsworth. After that, she found more and more causes to apply herself to in order to keep her mind off of the looming, depressingly unlikely drive to find Shaun: help Preston’s crew, clean up Sanctuary Hills, save a nearby settlement, _anything_ to motivate her onward, because she didn’t want to give up; not really. She just wanted her life back.

But now that the prospect of finding Shaun was suddenly much nearer, and yet so much farther away, Tuesday couldn’t keep her emotions bottled up under the pressure. She cried in the middle of Kellogg’s house—the very home of the man who’d stolen her family from her—until her throat was raw and her lungs were sore. Then she cried even longer.

A rattle of the front door was what finally jerked her out of her ocean of misery, sending her heart racing in an instant. She jumped up from the chair, swiping at her swollen eyes even as she cast around for a weapon in case somehow Kellogg had come back, or the mayor was here to nail her for trespassing, or—

The door swung open and Tuesday froze like a deer in headlights (or a radstag in…something else, now) as the figure who rounded the corner was revealed to be not a shadowy enemy, but Piper.

She was talking as she entered: “Blue? Nick said you sent him away but you were still—” Then she reached the secret room and laid eyes on Tuesday standing there taut as a bowstring and red in the face, and her voice died. For a moment, at least. “Blue?” she asked gently once she’d recovered, taking a tentative step into the room like she wasn’t sure Tuesday wouldn’t attack her. Her brows were furrowed in concern, and she half-raised one hand toward her friend. “Were you…crying?”

The vault dweller turned away, eyes stinging again, in shame instead of sorrow this time. She had always hated crying in front of people. When she was young, she was scolded for it. When she was grown, she was patronized for it. These days, she may well be killed for it. As much as she trusted Piper, she didn't want even her to see her like this.

But Piper didn’t let her hide for long. “Blue,” she said in tender tones, now certain of what she’d walked in on. “Are you okay?” She took another step closer, still careful, and tilted her head in an attempt to catch Tuesday’s misty gaze. 

_Of course I’m not okay._

The vault dweller kept her eyes trained stubbornly on the floor, wrestling within herself: part of her wished that Piper would just _leave,_ but another part of her—one that had been starved for far too long—wanted nothing more than to open up to the reporter; relieve some of the crushing weight that was pressing down on her shoulders. She clenched her fists at her sides as the silence in the room stretched longer and the tension grew thicker. She doubted Piper would leave her alone without a damn convincing assurance that she was fine, and Tuesday knew she would not be able to rustle up such an act tonight. So she didn’t have a choice, really. She’d have to let herself be vulnerable. As much as that idea went against her very grain, she could stomach it, she thought, as long as it was Piper.

Tuesday let herself sink back into the (torture?) chair in the center of the room and lowered her head into her hands again. The posture of defeat felt different this time; less lonely. That was even before Piper closed the distance to her and ventured one hand out to rest on her shoulder, sending warmth cascading through her frame.

“No,” the vault dweller admitted hoarsely into her hands. “I’m not okay.”

Piper let her hand slide down to Tuesday’s knee as she sank to her own knees in front of the chair, facing her. “Well, yeah,” she said, still soft but with a wry edge to her voice. “Wouldn’t take a Nick Valentine to figure that one out.” She waited a moment in case Tuesday volunteered anything more, and when she didn’t, the reporter continued, “Is this about Shaun?”

“What isn’t?” shot back the older woman sharply, but more in frustration with her situation than with Piper. She let her hands drop so that her tear-streaked face could burn in the open air. “I’m just—” She shook her head, still unable to meet her friend’s eyes. Her shoulders slumped. “If I’m too late and he’s ten years old…”

Piper’s grip on her tightened. “Hey. None of this is your fault. It’s not like you _chose_ to get boxed up in a fridge for two centuries.” If Tuesday had been looking, she’d have seen Piper grimace at the blunt way that came out. “What I’m trying to say is, you’re doing the best you can for him,” the reporter amended.

“That’s not good enough,” Tuesday insisted. “I’ve missed his whole childhood. What if he’s—” Her voice strangled off as a lump came to her throat again. Sheer willpower was the only thing holding off a sob.

“What if he’s like them?” Piper finished lowly, knowingly. At Tuesday’s nod, she assured, “Then that isn’t your fault either.”

“That doesn’t make it any easier.” It came out as a weak whisper.

Piper let out a sigh. Her hands shifted to take Tuesday’s and squeeze, as if to try and transfer some of her strength to the other woman. “I’m sorry, Blue,” was her only response—the only response she _could_ give, the vault dweller realized, because this whole mess was so far out of her hands that condolences were the only logical reaction.

Tuesday took a deep breath and released it and it shook going both ways. She was trying hard not to cry again, but all she could think about was all the horrible ways her search for Shaun could implode, and it was just eating away at her mind, and—

It surprised her when Piper rose abruptly to her feet and tugged on her hands to follow.

“Come on,” the reporter prompted, wiggling their joined hands between them. Her voice was strained, but still tried to be chipper. “We’re going home. What you need is some food and rest.”

Tuesday obliged her and unfolded to her feet to a protesting creak in her knees. For the first time in this exchange she met Piper’s eyes, and the raw concern in the younger girl’s was at once heartwarming and heartbreaking. Just to make her feel a little better, Tuesday teased, “Sugar Bombs don’t count as food.” Though she didn’t smile, she got half of one from Piper.

“Yeah, okay, smartass. At least they’re hardly radioactive,” the reporter shot back as she eased them toward the door. Tuesday followed without protest, and when they stepped out onto the metal catwalk of the Diamond City stands she realized just how much of a relief it was simply to be _out_ of that place. She breathed deeply of the radioactive air and it was the most refreshing she’d ever tasted.

Piper kept hold of her hand the whole way back to Publick Occurrences, and Tuesday found that she didn’t mind. She savored it, in fact. It was a grounding point of warmth in the middle of the uncaring cold of the Commonwealth, just like Piper herself, and it made Tuesday very glad that she’d opened up to this girl. 

It was nice not to be alone. 

… 

Dogmeat led them through the hostile, barren wilderness for what seemed like weeks. In truth, it was only a day, but Tuesday was wired so tight the whole time her energy burned up like gasoline. She never took her hands off her rifle, half-expecting Kellogg to appear behind every copse of trees or rocky outcropping that they passed. He didn’t, but plenty of other foes littered the path west from Diamond City. Tuesday and Piper had shot down more mongrel dogs, bloodbug swarms, and even the odd yao guai than she could keep track of. She just hoped their course would stay clear of anything worse.

Until they reached Kellogg, that is.

They were approaching what looked like a checkpoint along a car-littered freeway; a square, gray structure intact but for its missing doors. Dogmeat bounded ahead, huffing excitedly as he picked up a strengthened scent, and the two girls followed on slower, tired feet.

Tuesday led the way inside, rifle raised. Her first glance told her that the shelter was empty but for some rubble, a shelf, a few scattered supplies and a sleeping bag. Nothing looked too interesting except some .44mm rounds on the shelf, which she pocketed. Whatever evidence Domeat had found must have been outside.

Tuesday started across the dingy shelter, heading for the doorway on the streetside in search of their next lead.

She noticed the frag mine too late. 

The urgent beeping was what caught her attention. At the noise she stumbled back a few steps, but she was unsure of which way to flee because she hadn’t actually laid eyes on the thing yet and there was little place to go anyway. In the seconds that she had left, she whipped her head around to locate Piper, thinking that if she herself got blown to bits she had to at least keep the reporter safe. Piper was at the door, unintentionally blocking the exit as she came upon the room just as Tuesday was trying to escape it, and time was slipping away like sand through her fingers so all Tuesday could do was throw herself in front of the girl’s smaller body and _brace_ —

_Bam!_

The shockwave threw Tuesday into Piper and Piper into the doorframe, where her back hit painfully (it could not be nearly as painful as the burning sensation _ripping_ through Tuesday’s right arm right now, though, the vault dweller thought as they hit the ground). Tuesday rolled off of her companion immediately, gripping her wounded arm and trying to muffle her cry of agony behind clenched teeth. The sleeve of the Silver Shroud coat that she wore because it was the firmest armor she had was torn to pieces. Shrapnel was buried in the skin near her elbow, but the burns stretching from wrist to shoulder were far more concerning. Her skin was peeled away and almost as red as the blood leaking through ragged roles. Even the brush of the air was enough to touch off a horrible pain worse than that of the explosion itself. Tears leaked from Tuesday’s eyes as she writhed as if maybe it would hurt less in a different position.

Piper took in her condition in one round-eyed glance and gasped. “Shit, are you okay?” Obviously Tuesday was not, but the vault dweller groaned to at least assure her companion that she wasn’t dead. The reporter knelt in front of her, face paling as her eyes fixed on all the _blood_ , and her voice came out thin: “Blue, your _arm_.”

“It’s—fine. I’m fine. I just—gah,” Tuesday dug her heels into the rubble beneath her and pushed futilely against the pain. “Need a stimpak.”

Piper nodded and lunged for Tuesday’s pack, digging for it frantically as the vault dweller forced herself to breathe through her grinding teeth.

“Got it!” Piper returned to Tuesday’s side with the syringe in hand, but when she leaned in to administer it, her hands were shaking so violently the needle tip wouldn’t go where she wanted it. She cursed and grabbed her wrist with her other hand to steady it, but the added support only doubled the trembling. “Shit!” she cursed again more vehemently, and when Tuesday managed to look up, she found the reporter’s eyes shining with frustrated tears.

The vault dweller made a split-second decision, shot her hand out to grab the stimpak over both of Piper’s and plunge it in herself. It didn’t hit the vein, but it would have to be good enough.

Tuesday screwed her eyes shut and groaned again against the pain of the drugs beginning their work. Quicker than any human body ought to bear, the ugly, bloody, burnt-up wound began to close up and fade. Dimly she could feel Piper holding her undamaged hand as the concoction raced through her veins. Even once the burns were covered with a brand new layer of skin, it was clear by the lingering scar tissue that the arm would not be the same again, and Tuesday felt her heart sink. It was worth it, though. Better her than Piper.

After the worst part was past and the pain gradually deadened to a manageable ache, Tuesday’s body lost its vicious tension.

Only then did Piper let her own shoulders relax, switching her grip on the other woman’s hand from a tight lifeline hold to almost a caress. “Did you…” the reporter ventured hoarsely into the now-silence, glancing back at the place where the mine had been, “did you just take that for me?”

Tuesday regarded her through hazy eyes. Stimpaks were a wonder of the modern world, but they were not without side effects. She held that hazel gaze with difficulty. “You have a little sister to take care of.”

“You have Shaun,” Piper shot back instantly. Her expression crumpled and her hand tightened again. “Blue, this is a dangerous world we live in, and I know that. And so does Nat. If something happens to me, she’ll—” Her voice cracked, rendering her argument much less convincing. “She’ll manage. Don’t risk yourself for me.”

Tuesday grunted and it was the furthest thing from a promise. Piper frowned, knowing this, and the vault dweller kept her gaze as resolute as possible. She wasn’t going to stop risking herself for Piper. Ever. This girl had a family and a job and a _life_ to take care of, and Tuesday…well, Tuesday was past her due, Shaun or no Shaun. She’d lived through the prime of her life in a world now lost. Logically, she was the more expendable one of the two.

Piper must have read the thoughts behind her eyes, because she sighed explosively even as her grip on Tuesday went gentle. “Damn it, Blue, I won’t ever be able to forgive myself if you die on my watch.”

“Likewise,” Tuesday returned softly.

Piper’s hazel eyes flickered over her face desperately as if searching for some way to make her _understand,_ and Tuesday tried to express just as vehemently that she already _did_. She understood why Piper didn’t want her taking bullets for her. She understood the overwhelming desire to protect someone else more closely than her own life. She understood the guilt of watching someone step in front of her to take the pain that should have been hers— _she knew._ But she had been protected for her whole prewar life, and now it was her turn to be the protector. Especially when it came to Piper, the one person she’d found herself unbreakably attached to since landing in this shitty new world.

She would get blown up a thousand times to keep her safe.

Tuesday was so absorbed in her thoughts and those eyes and that feeling of urgency and intensity that she didn’t even realize Piper had been leaning in slightly, gradually, until they were inches apart. The look on her face was somewhere between stern and tender and her cheeks had not just returned to their normal color but reddened and Tuesday caught her breath at the _warmth_ radiating off of her. Not for the first time, but for the first _intentional_ time, she let her gaze drift down to those wry red lips, wondering—

Dogmeat’s sudden bark signalled that he had found something.

Piper blinked out of her reverie, sighed, and leaned forward to peck Tuesday on the forehead too quickly for her to comprehend. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she mumbled out, though it was obviously not all she wanted to say, and before Tuesday could respond she was straightening up to rejoin Dogmeat just outside the shelter.

_What the hell was that?_

Tuesday’s newly healed arm still shook as she raised it to brush over the spot Piper had kissed, hardly believing that moment had been real. Hardly comprehending why it, combined with such a small gesture, was making her gut flutter and her face burn like this.

Until she gave it two seconds’ thought and realized that she’d gotten in way too deep without even noticing she was falling. She didn’t just like Piper. She—

She _liked_ Piper.

She let her hand fall, dragging down her blushing face in consternation.

_Oh._

“Oh, shit.”

… 

She killed him. She killed Kellogg. And even after it was revealed that maybe she shouldn’t have; maybe she should have kept him alive to pick his brain for leads to Shaun’s whereabouts, she didn’t regret it.

In fact, “I’d do it again if I got the chance,” she said darkly to Nick Valentine when he brought it up.

The looks she earned from her two friends were surprised and a little disapproving. She wasn’t normally the violent type, after all; that’s why they liked her so much in the first place. But Tuesday felt no regret. She had a damn good excuse to want to watch the light fade from that bastard’s eyes over and over again. To be the one who snuffed it out. He hadn’t shown Nate any mercy; why should he receive any?

Piper regarded her as if she were a wounded animal, concerned and a little wary. “Blue…”

Tuesday stared her right in the eyes and knew that she didn’t even have to speak; knew the look said it all: _He took my husband. He took my son._ A blink. _What would you have done if it were Nat?_

And Piper kept her mouth shut, because maybe she’d realized that she couldn’t judge what she couldn’t understand.

…


	4. Chapter 4

After her trip through Kellogg’s mind, Blue retreated to the Third Rail to drown her demons in drink.

Piper went with her, because of course she did. Mostly she didn’t want the other woman to be alone right now, for her comfort _and_ for her safety. Kellogg’s memories had been painful, to say the least. Not only was his backstory frustratingly sad, but to watch his atrocities against Blue’s family happen through his own eyes… 

Piper couldn’t imagine what the other woman was going through. She wanted to be here to lighten the load in any way she could. She wanted to be able to _help._

She wasn’t doing a whole lot of helping right now, though. Blue was perched on a stool at the counter, shoulders bowed and head down as she worked on her fourth bottle of Gwinnett Stout. Her short dark hair hung in messy waves in front of her face so Piper could not read her expression. She wondered if it was intentional. The vault dweller hadn’t said a word after bursting out of the Memory Den and making her brisk way straight here. Piper didn't know what to do.

Magnolia’s voice floating from the stage in the corner had kept the silence from crushing them all night, if barely. She was in the midst of a break right now, though, and she used the time to sashay up to the counter on the opposite side of Blue.

“Well, hey there,” she greeted in her smoky low tones, eyeing Blue up and down. “New face. You’re not from around here, huh?” Without hardly waiting for the vault dweller’s nod, she drifted a little closer. “How’d you like the song?”

Blue raised her head for the first time that night and faced the woman. When she spoke for the first time, it was croaky and painful, but her words were smooth. “It was lovely.”

“Yeah,” agreed Piper, more of an attempt to encourage Blue than a sign she had actually been listening to the music (she hadn’t). “Great set tonight.” Even as the words left her mouth, she realized her eyes had been on Magnolia’s sequined dress as she said it (the thing was bright, okay!) and thus the remark probably came across way more suggestive than intended. “—of songs, that is,” she tried to correct quickly, feeling heat rise to her cheeks when she only served to dig her hole deeper, if the smug arch of Magnolia’s brow was any indicator. Piper just gave up and buried her face in her hands, mumbling a half-assed excuse about the temperature of the room. She really did have a way with words. Never when it mattered, of course.

“Charming as always, Piper, dearest,” Magnolia let the awkward interaction roll off her back and turned back to Blue, leaning an elbow on the counter in such a way that her dress pulled open a bit at the slit. Her pale thigh caught the light just so and Piper almost groaned aloud. This was _not_ the time. Magnolia either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Is there anything _else_ I can do for you tonight?” she purred, sidling right up to Blue so it was nigh impossible not to stare at her glinting red dress, and by association her very visible cleavage.

For some reason that overture made Piper’s gut clench into a rock-hard little ball that almost made her throw up her beer and she found herself watching Blue breathlessly for her answer, begging internally _no. Don’t_. It wouldn’t be _fair._ Magnolia was lovely, sure, and Piper wasn’t altogether sure what kind of coping methods Blue usually turned to to smother her sorrows, but Piper had stuck by the survivor’s side through thick and thin and if anyone deserved her attention then—

Piper cut off that thought, realizing how disgusting it was. Blue wasn’t a prize; she was a _person_ , and she was free to do what she chose. Piper would have to deal with that. She dropped her head onto her arms so she wouldn’t have to watch, anyway, trying to fight down nausea. She really needed to lay off these drinks. At the same time, maybe they would make her forget whatever disappointment she would endure tonight.

Piper was so busy preemptively sulking into the table that she didn’t hear Blue’s answer to Magnolia. She’d just resigned herself to the assumption that the two would strike off somewhere private and get back to her in the morning, so it was a healthy shock when she felt a familiar hand on her knee. When she jerked her head up, she found Blue watching her with tender concern behind the haze of pain and alcohol in those gray eyes. And Magnolia walking away with a casual wave over her shoulder.

“You okay?” the vault dweller asked.

Piper was so surprised by her presence plus her _hand_ on her _knee_ that she barely even comprehended the question, much less how out of place it was—why should _Blue_ be concerned about _her_ right now? “You didn’t flirt with her,” she blurted instead, unable to keep the confused relief from coloring her beer-slurred speech.

Blue was drunk enough that she didn’t read too far into that. Instead she shrugged loosely and removed her hand to pick at the grain of the wooden counter, suddenly very intent on its surface. “I don’t really like sex.”

“What?” _We’re talking about this now?_ Don’t get her wrong, Piper was glad Blue was finally speaking to her, but she was so caught off guard by the woman’s bluntness about the topic, not to mention the words themselves, that she couldn’t even process them for a second. Then once her brain caught up, she furrowed her brows. “But—Shaun. Nate.” It wasn’t as eloquent or tactful as she would have normally managed, but it got the point across.

Blue lowered her cheek onto her arm and regarded Piper with unreadable eyes. The silence stretched long enough that the reporter began to wonder if she should apologize, but then Blue let out a long, tired sigh, and her shoulders relaxed like she’d decided she could trust Piper with her next words. “Nate was on active duty,” she finally began to explain, if in a roundabout way. “He would be away from home for months at a time.” She returned her attention fixedly to the counter. “When he got back and wanted time with his wife, was I supposed to say no?”

Piper was speechless for a long moment, her mind reeling, not least because she was surprised that Blue was getting into this _now,_ searching for a suitable answer. Nothing helpful made itself immediately known, so she was left stumbling: “So you—I mean, he—were you—”

“I loved him,” Blue assured, sounding like she choked on the past tense but not correcting herself. “We were as happy as a military family in the middle of a war could be, I guess. But…” She shrugged helplessly. “That was never—I mean, it wasn’t—” A frustrated sigh huffed from her throat. “That part was never as important to me.”

Piper scooted a little closer on her seat, feeling like she should be comforting Blue right now, and not just because of the events of this evening rubbing salt in her wounds.

The vault dweller looked over at her again, and Piper stopped. Those gray eyes held a familiar look: humor thinly veiling pain. “Don’t get me wrong; everything else is still on the table,” she said, lips curling wryly at one corner. Then the smile faded. “I’d just—rather not be touched. Like that.”

Piper nodded a little too enthusiastically, anxious to assure her friend that that was _fine_ and _respectable_ and _normal_ even if her own husband hadn’t realized it, and also a little excited at Blue’s comment— _everything else is still on the table._ She burned to know whether that was a general truth or an admission intended for her.

Before Piper had much time to mull it over, Blue straightened up to lean her elbow on the counter and fix her with half-lidded eyes and a lazy smirk, like a schoolgirl who always seemed to know a little too much about everyone. “What about you, papergirl?”

Piper stiffened uncomfortably. “Oh, uh! I, uh—I guess I’d like it as much as the next girl.” She should have been expecting this, and yet her sluggish mind had failed to form an answer that wouldn’t make her look like a fool. She grimaced to herself and covered her eyes with one hand.

“You don’t know?” Blue asked, sounding only curious, not accusatory.

But, “There tends to be more important things to worry about most of the time,” Piper said more defensively than was necessary. “End of the world and all.” This had been a tender topic since Nat had reached the age that the first flickers of romantic interest appeared and started asking questions. Questions Piper couldn’t answer. _Why don’t you know anything about this?_ she’d asked, and it hurt an undue amount. _You’re supposed to teach me stuff._

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t making fun,” Blue—perfect, careful, understanding (even when drunk) Blue—responded instantly.

“No harm done,” Piper assured weakly, but she didn’t really mean it. This insecurity had definitely caused her some harm over the years. It had only gotten worse since she started the paper and basically became Public Nuisance No. 1 in everyone’s eyes. The old hurt bothered her like a wound that hadn’t healed right; made her say in flat self-deprecation, “Who would want some nosy, big-mouthed reporter girl, anyway?” She chuckled mirthlessly. “Nobody.”

There was a long pause during which Blue stared down into her drink with a gradually intensifying expression furrowing her brows. Then, slowly, deliberately, the vault dweller lifted her head and swiveled on her stool until she was facing Piper, so close that she had to bracket the girl’s knees with her own to sit comfortably. Piper was almost _painfully_ conscious of the contact paired with the look in the vault dweller’s eyes right now: heavy, warm, clouded by alcohol but intense all the same. It was making her head spin and her chest tight. Her face heated as she wondered what the _hell_ her companion was doing.

“Nobody?” the taller woman asked softly, purposefully.

Piper suddenly found it difficult to swallow. Yeah, she would definitely not be getting drunk around Blue again anytime soon. She was pinned by Blue’s lovely gray eyes, and the touch of her legs against her own was distracting her, and _when did she get that close?_ and Blue’s words _everything else is still on the table_ reverberated through her mind like a more pleasant version of warning bells and—

“A’ight, ya bloody whores, why don’t ya take it to the Rexford for the night, huh?” Whitechapel Charlie’s tinny drawl cut sharply into the moment, and Piper jerked back from what had become mere inches between herself and her companion. Her first instinct was to scowl, partly at the robot’s interruption and partly that his insult was so inappropriate based on what they’d _just_ been talking about, but of course he didn’t pay her any mind.

“Yeah. Alright,” Blue broke the tension for her, only a hint of that previous emotion in her voice, and slid off her stool to go with drink in hand. Piper was disappointed but not surprised at the sudden change, and she accepted it with a sigh. She reached to pull the mostly-finished beer—her fourth—from the vault dweller’s hand and place it on the counter. 

“I think we’ve both had enough,” she replied to Blue’s sour face. The other woman nodded, though, and let herself be guided toward the door by Piper’s surer hand.

The way to the Rexford Hotel could have lasted thirty seconds or a hundred years. Piper was aware of nothing but the nervousness growing in the pit of her stomach as she wondered what exactly she was walking into; what exactly could follow the conversation they’d just had in the bar, not to mention the _moment_ after. She worked herself into an almost-panic with the conflicting sentiments of _what if something happens?_ (excited) and _what if something happens!_ (terrified) and by the time they reached their room, she was practically hyperventilating.

It turned out to be for nothing.

Because, once alone, Blue acted as if the tension from before had slipped her mind entirely, and she was tipsy enough that Piper couldn’t be sure it hadn’t. The vault dweller went through her nightly routine of cleaning up (as best she could in a place like this) and changing into comfortable clothes as if she’d forgotten Piper was even there. The reporter wasn’t sure if she was more relieved or disappointed that it looked as if nothing would go down between them tonight. She supposed, objectively, that it was a good thing. That didn't stop her from feeling as though her heart shriveled a little inside.

Once they were sleep-ready, they piled into the double bed together, as always, simply because it was the logical thing to do. Piper’s chest barely even tightened at the experience anymore. It wasn’t anything scandalous; they never touched when they had to share a bed, especially when it was dark like this; easier to forget their inhibitions, alcohol notwithstanding. It was sort of an unspoken rule between them, even before their friendship started hovering on the verge of something that was…more. And the way Blue had been acting since they’d arrived here, Piper figured tonight would be like every other night—aside from the fact that tonight she had a thousand new thoughts to keep her up until the early hours, exacerbated by the other woman’s presence at her side.

But tonight was different.

Tonight, Blue didn’t keep the unspoken yet mandatory sliver of space between them. 

Instead, mere seconds after they lay down, she shuffled forward until her front was pressed against Piper’s back and, though that was heart-stopping enough, didn’t stop there. No; she went on to wrap both warm arms around the panicking reporter and pull her snugly against her.

Piper couldn’t help the startled almost-whimper that accompanied the thrill of Blue’s touch. At the sound the vault dweller stiffened and loosened her grip. “Okay?” she murmured worriedly in Piper’s ear and, even drunk, waited for the girl’s nod before relaxing into her again with a sigh. “Okay.”

Piper was seriously wondering if this was an alcohol-induced hallucination. She would be lying if she said she hadn’t imagined this exact situation more than a few times, on the nights where she could feel Blue’s breath on her neck yet could never entertain the thought of getting more. She’d fantasized about having her feelings reciprocated ever since she’d found herself growing fonder of the vault dweller than was strictly platonic, way back when they’d first started traveling together. But to have the possibility become _real?_

Piper was virtually vibrating from head to toe with a mix of apprehension and excitement, hoping against hope that Blue wasn’t just being clingy because she was drunk. The way she’d _looked_ at her earlier, when she’d just drawled _“nobody?”_ in layered tones and leaned close and hypnotized Piper without even trying—that couldn’t be nothing, right? That wasn’t just the alcohol talking, right? She couldn’t be sure.

She was so entangled in her racing thoughts that she didn’t notice Blue was crying until a drop of wetness hit the back of her neck. It was immediately followed by a sniff, and Piper was run over with guilt. How could she forget that her friend was not okay? Just because she’d been able to hold a drunken conversation didn’t mean she’d forgotten her grief. If anything, it meant she was handling it _worse_ ; bottling up one’s emotions never worked very well for long.

Cursing herself even as her heart melted for her friend, Piper turned over and slid her own arms around Blue, strong and careful against her hiccuping body. “Oh, Blue,” she murmured as the vault dweller buried her face in the crook of her neck. She ran her hands over her back in soothing strokes. “I’m sorry.”

The other woman didn’t answer but for the press of her nose deeper into Piper’s hair, as if she could hide there and escape the pain of her reality. Piper could do nothing but pray that it worked.

They stayed like that for a long time, and though the reporter’s back grew stiff from lying in the same position for such an extended period, she held Blue tightly and without complaint until her quiet sobs subsided. After that, the vault dweller seemed to relax somewhat. Her breaths by Piper’s ear were no longer so ragged, and her grip on the back of her trench coat was less desperate. Their embrace became less like a spur-of-the-moment urge and more like a comfortable choice. Though it made Piper’s heart trip in her chest, she savored it for all it was worth. She could almost make herself believe that this wasn’t a one-time thing born of agonizing emotion; that maybe it was a sign of something else between them; something deeper.

But she knew better, and she prepared to be disappointed in the morning when Blue forgot all about this and never came near her again.

She wished things could be different.

Piper sighed and absorbed what warmth she could from the press of the other woman’s body against her; from her arms around her. She whispered soft comforts to her friend until her breathing deepened into sleep, and then wished for some comfort of her own.

It was safe to say that she fell asleep long after Blue did.

…


	5. Chapter 5

Staying in Goodneighbor meant making good on her promise to Kent Connolly. Tuesday followed his radioed leads to three different no-good lowlifes upsetting the peace of the town: first some ratty murderer, then an enterprising chems dealer, and lastly a full-blown assassin with her very own gang. She’d dished out heroic justice as the Silver Shroud, and though she’d never enjoyed killing people, it was satisfying in a way to make the streets of Goodneighbor a little safer for everyone. It’s what she usually did, only this time she was wearing a costume and speaking in a funny voice as she did it.

Tuesday had just taken down Kendra, and after dragging the body over to the door where it would trip up any potential ambushers, she had time to take a breath.

This room would have been nice, had it not smelled like chems and been decorated with bloodstains. There was a pair of windows on the streetside wall that let in a lovely stream of natural light, and the big bed pushed up against the corner was in decent shape. The chemistry station in front of the far window would have been better replaced by a bureau or a cabinet, but it filled the space rather aesthetically anyway.

Then there was Piper. The reporter stood at the chemistry station, hands braced on its surface to lean for a better look out the window, her strong profile bared to Tuesday. The evening light spilling pink-gold through the shade painted her dark hair and coat in warm contrast.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, Tuesday found herself overwhelmed by the serenity—the _beauty_ of the sight and all the feelings that rushed up her throat every time she associated that word with Piper. She ached to cross the distance between them; to get a closer, deeper look at the way her friend practically glowed in the evening light; to enter that beam of luminance and be caught in the ethereal world it seemed to encompass.

That was a _lot,_ but Tuesday couldn’t fight down the almost giddy energy it gave her. Damn, she had it bad.

A glance between the bed and the reporter gave her an idea and although it was a terrible one, she wasn’t in a very discerning state of mind. “Lie down with me,” she blurted out before she had time to think.

In the wake of her unintended words, she froze, and Piper whipped around with a perfectly echoed look of surprise—and panic?—on her face.

“I—I need to recover my strength,” Tuesday explained quickly, lamely, under Piper’s wide-eyed gaze. She really did; a few of Kendra’s bullets had grazed her skin through the chinks in her Silver Shroud armor and though a stimpak had closed up the holes, it had done nothing for her exhaustion from the fight. “And there’s a bed here. And it’s safe. Ish.”

“And you want me to join you?” Piper clarified as if she couldn’t quite believe her ears. Her face was flushing slowly from the cheeks up.

Tuesday laughed awkwardly. Was the idea that inconceivable? They’d shared a bed before, after all. Usually when it was dark, and usually without any weird overtures, but still. “I mean, what else are you going to do? Watch me sleep?”

“Keep watch for any unfriendly visitors,” Piper provided, searching the vault dweller’s face rather suspiciously. “But if you think the place is safe…” She shrugged, and it looked stiff. “A power nap couldn’t hurt.”

She rounded the bedframe, eyes locked on Tuesday’s with something inscrutable in their depths, and the vault dweller sorely wished that she could understand what they were telling her. But she didn’t get the chance to dwell as Piper climbed onto the far side of the mattress and propped herself on an elbow, waiting to get comfortable until Tuesday made herself vulnerable as well.

And she did, her heartbeat picking up as she lowered herself down beside her companion and all the feelings she’d been trying to push down since she first recognized them flooded to the forefront.

_Okay. Yeah. Bad idea._

But she was committed now, so she rolled onto her back with a sigh that she hoped didn’t sound too forced and laced her fingers over her stomach. The picture of relaxation. Not.

Piper folded her arm under her head and leaned on it, still on her side so she faced Tuesday. “Well, this is romantic,” she joked, but couldn’t hide the nervous undertone to her voice. The vault dweller wondered what _she_ had to be nervous about. Was this making her uncomfortable? “We’ve got our lovely bloodstains on the walls; our freshly dead body guarding the door; the threat of more gangsters showing up at any moment.”

Tuesday let out a defeated sigh through her nose. “Piper, don’t.” She _knew_ how messed up this was even without Piper pointing it out; without even considering the fresh remains of her target littered around the room. She also felt bad enough about the thrill that went through her at lying in bed beside Piper without even bringing up the word _romantic._

“Don’t what?” the reporter asked worriedly, like she was afraid she’d done something wrong.

Tuesday turned her head on the mattress to face her. Gazing into those hazel eyes from half a foot away, her gut shriveled at the thought of ruining what they had. Of going too far and chasing Piper away. So, “Don’t tempt me,” she said on a breath, and she simultaneously loved and hated the way Piper’s gaze flicked to her lips as she spoke in spite of the words she was saying.

The younger woman’s eyes went heavy-lidded even as her breathing shallowed. Her expression was a contradiction, too; brows furrowing in distress even as she said huskily, “You were the one who wanted me in bed with you.”

The vault dweller sighed again, her face heating as she turned it toward the ceiling. “I know. It’s…complicated,” she managed. That was an understatement. She had so many conflicting feelings vying for dominance at any one time that she constantly felt like she was about to explode. But that was probably a little dramatic to say, so instead she started at the root of the problem. “I still—I—I thought that killing Kellogg would give me some peace about Nate, but it hasn’t.”

“That’s the thing about revenge, Blue,” Piper returned softly, “It doesn’t work.”

Tuesday rolled her head to the side again to look her companion in the eye and was again hit by the way the hazel turned honey gold in the light. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.” Maybe she was deflecting, but she also itched to know anything about this girl that she was willing to tell.

Piper hummed a regretful affirmative. “I’ve had my fair share of quests for vengeance,” she said. Then she shifted to pillow her face on her hand, bringing herself a few inches closer to her companion. Tuesday tried _very_ hard to keep her eyes from wandering down. “I’ve learned enough to tell you that the best thing to do is to let it go.”

“I can’t just _let go_ of seven years of marriage, Piper.” Tuesday rubbed her brow with one hand, mostly to hide her burning face from the other girl. She _wanted_ to be able to follow Piper’s advice. She _wanted_ to be able to accept that Nate was gone and be able to live freely again—to _love_ freely again—but she was still carrying around her regret like a physical burden. She wished she could have saved him. She wished they had their old life back. She wished none of this had ever happened. She wished a lot of things. 

Piper’s hand closed around hers and pulled it gently away, fingers toying reflectively with the wedding ring still on Tuesday’s own. The vault dweller’s guilt told her that she should pull back, but the rest of her was _hungry_ for something to help her move on. And if Piper was that thing, well…the way she was going, she might just manage it, eventually.

“‘Till death do us part,’” said the reporter quietly, and Tuesday physically flinched at the words. “Isn’t that the old saying?”

“Y-yes. That was our wedding vow.” Tuesday barely managed to speak past the unwelcome tears rising to her eyes. She pulled her hand away and cradled it to her chest, unsure if she was anxious to preserve the ring or the ghost of Piper’s touch. When a tear escaped her control, the younger woman moved her own hand to brush it away and then kept it there.

“I guess that’s all I have to say, Blue,” she whispered hoarsely into the uncertain space between them, regretful but understanding at the same time.

And Tuesday knew she was right, but it still hurt like hell. She couldn’t help the sob that broke free of her throat in the next second, nor did she resist when Piper finally closed the distance to wrap her arms around her comfortingly. Tuesday held her back, taking comfort in the warmth pressed to her top to toe; in the familiar musk of paper and leather that grounded her in the middle of the storm. This felt familiar, but she couldn’t quite place the memory. Maybe she’d just imagined it one too many times. Then again, maybe it had something to do with last night, which she couldn’t remember at all.

It didn’t really matter, she supposed.

She wasn’t sure how long she cried, nor how long she slept afterward, but when she opened her eyes again the sun had gone down and she was still safe in Piper’s arms.

_I have to move on._

…

She tried to save Kent. She really did. But she simply could not talk down the bloody bastard Sinjin in time to stay his hand, and now the poor ghoul was slumped on the metal floor with a chunk out of his face.

She should never have become the Silver Shroud.

“I’m so sorry,” she said brokenly to his unmoving form. She hesitated at first, never overly eager to touch a dead body, but it felt right somehow to lay a comforting hand on his back. Like that would make her apology reach him easier on the other side.

The swish of leather signalled Piper’s careful approach. “You did everything you could,” she said gently as she reached Tuesday’s side and laid a hand on her shoulder, a warmer echo of the vault dweller's gesture for Kent.

“I should have shot that bastard as soon as I laid eyes on him,” Tuesday said tightly, not raising her eyes. “I should have done something sooner.”

Piper’s grip went firmer, convicted. “That’s not you, Blue. You always give people a chance, and that’s a rare thing out here.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t. For all the good it does,” the vault dweller mumbled hollowly, eyes fixed morosely on Kent’s back.

“Then you’d be no different from them,” Piper asserted, gesturing at the bodies of Sinjin and his fellow crooks cooling around the room. Tuesday figured _heartless_ was the point she was going for, but _dead_ fit just as well.

She knew her friend was right. She knew she couldn’t just give up her whole philosophy; her core belief; her instinctual drive to _help_ people because some missions went wrong. She couldn’t let the Commonwealth drag her down when she failed to pull it up. That wasn’t her.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t really fucking painful to see all her efforts dead at her feet. That didn’t mean it would ever be easy to watch evil trump good, like it seemed to do so often now. That didn’t mean she had to be content with watching the world go to shit around her.

Tuesday had no choice but to keep fighting. And even when she seemed to be losing a battle, she couldn't give up, but keep going in hopes of winning the war.

If that war could ever be won, that is.

…


	6. Chapter 6

“I think…you should stay behind for this one.”

As soon as the words left Blue’s mouth, Piper felt her heart sink. She understood; she did, especially after Kent, but she still wanted to argue. She couldn’t just sit down and shut up as long as Blue’s safety was at stake. She wanted to be out there watching her friend’s back like she’d promised. “And miss out on the next installment in the story of the century?” she countered weakly.

Blue didn’t crack a smile. Her gray gaze was shadowed and almost sad, like she regretted having to make this call. “The Glowing Sea is hell,” she said, facing Piper closely so the reporter had to look up to meet her eyes. “I won't ask you to follow me there.”

Piper stepped even closer into Blue’s proximity so the Diamond City passersby wouldn’t hear her hoarsely whispered words: “What makes you think you’d have to ask?”

“Piper,” Blue’s voice almost broke on her name. She lifted her hands to Piper’s arms and her grip was tight, a contradiction to her desperate supplication: “Please. You’ll be safer here.” Her gray irises were intense, almost painfully so as they pinned Piper’s, like they were holding back what she really wanted to say. Piper wished she didn’t feel like she had to.

“And what about you, Blue?” The reporter grabbed the front of her friend’s chest armor and now they were all but clinging to each other on the stoop of Publick Occurrences, nose to nose. “How will I know you’ll come back to me?” She hadn’t meant to say that last part—those two extra words that made this so intimate—but now it was out there, and she could see the way it hit Blue right in the heart.

“I—” Blue choked on her words and stopped short. She blinked as if realizing for the first time how close they’d gotten. Her eyes roved over Piper’s face, conflicted, before settling someplace distinctly lower than her own. A breathless pause hung between them.

A slight tightening of the hands on her arms was all the warning Piper got before Blue leaned in abruptly and kissed her on the lips—light, quick, but powerfully deliberate. Piper couldn’t help the surprised noise that jumped from her throat at the gesture. Before she could gather her thoughts enough to decide whether to reciprocate, Blue’s lips were gone and the vault dweller was looking at her with round eyes, her own surprise reflected back in them. 

“Um—” Blue cleared her throat, cheeks tinged redder than usual, and hastily released her. “Consider that a promise.”

Piper’s brain was scrambling to catch up. She felt like all her blood had been replaced by a violent electric current. Blue’s armor was still clutched in her hands. “O-okay,” she managed after several blinks and a mental reminder to breathe. “I’ll hold you to that, then.” _Holy shit. Did that really just happen?_

“‘Bye, Piper.” Blue backed away with lowered eyes to join Nick Valentine on the steps by her suit of power armor. Nick, bless him, had respectfully looked away from the heartfelt exchange, but now he leaned close to Blue’s ear to murmur something in his smoky drawl. Piper wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it was.

She waved as Blue entered her armor and placed her foot on the lowest step, turning for one last glance to Diamond City and its trusty reporter before heading into the unknown. The vault dweller’s eyes caught Piper’s last, and her lips lifted in a little smile that sent the younger girl’s heart stumbling all over again.

Then she was off.

Piper waited until she’d lost sight of Blue and Valentine before turning away, letting out a shuddering sigh through lips that still tingled from the vault dweller's touch. She couldn’t help but wonder whether that kiss had been a one-time thing; a spur-of-the-moment reaction to the reality that this might be the last time they saw each other…or if it was something more.

She reached a reflective hand up to her own mouth, hesitantly hoping. And worrying already for Blue’s return.

…

It was three days before Tuesday made it back into Diamond City, exhausted and irradiated but whole; the next step of her mission solidified in her mind. Virgil the intelligent Super Mutant had told her and Nick the secret of the Institute’s location: it was underground, accessible only through teleportation, and the key to teleporting inside was in the hands—or the _heads,_ rather—of the Institute Coursers. The prospect of fighting a Courser was daunting, but no less so than braving the Glowing Sea had been. Although she figured her Glowing Sea strategy of _run until the monsters stop chasing you_ would not translate so well into this particular confrontation.

She’d worry about that later. Right now she was due a break, and walking into Diamond City filled her with such relief that her knees almost buckled on the spot.

Exiting her power armor and leaving it by the stairs like a haunting sentry (though taking the fusion core with her, because she wasn’t a _complete_ fool), Tuesday felt like hundreds of pounds of figurative as well as literal pressure had just slipped off her back. After thanking Nick for the hundredth time and releasing him back to his business, she strode toward the door of Publick Occurrences feeling like a new woman.

She only got a single knock in before the door was swinging open to reveal Piper’s hopeful face. At the sight of the vault dweller, she broke into an absolute grin and practically surged over the doorstep to tackle her in a hug.

“You’re back,” she said into Tuesday’s shoulder on a sigh of relief. Her fingers curled tightly into the back of her armor. “I know it’s only been a few days, but _goodness,_ Blue, I—”

The taller woman rested her hands against Piper’s back as her words broke off. Her meaning was still clear as day. “Yeah,” Tuesday agreed to the unspoken sentiment. _I missed you_ didn’t quite cover it, and neither did _I was worried about you_ or _I’m glad you’re back_ or any variation of platitude that just seemed too weak to communicate what she _meant._ So they let it go unsaid and simply allowed the warmth of their embrace do the talking. “Me too.”

Piper didn’t let go for a long moment, which was perfectly fine with Tuesday. When they finally did pull back, though, the vault dweller noticed the slightest flicker of the reporter’s eyes down to her lips, and suddenly the memory of their goodbye kiss rammed into her like a freight train.

_Oh yeah. Oh, shit._

Tuesday hadn’t exactly waited around to find out how Piper had felt about that, and she was at once regretful and relieved by that fact. Regretful, because of course she burned to know whether this…this _feeling_ she had was mutual, and relieved because she didn’t know if she could handle finding out. Piper hadn’t scolded her or pushed her away that day, but she also hadn’t reciprocated immediately, so Tuesday was left wondering where exactly the reporter’s feelings stood. And of course there was the matter of her _own_ feelings. She obviously cared for Piper—as more than friends—but part of her was still not ready to pursue that kind of relationship.

 _I have to move on,_ she reminded herself often, but she still couldn’t shake the lingering threads of guilt for Nate from her mind. 

Right now, though, the thought of Piper was so much closer; more colorful; more _real_ that she was almost able to forget it, for an instant. Faced with Piper’s brilliant, slightly bunny-toothed smile (the one that she knew the feeling of, now), she figured she could forget anything else.

She let a smile rise to her own lips and flicked the brim of Piper’s hat playfully. She couldn’t wait to get back into the thick of things with her. Nick had been a great companion, sure, but it just wasn’t the same without a steady stream of sweets and banter to keep her spirits up on her travels. Now that they were headed into a slightly less sure death trap than the Glowing Sea, Tuesday felt better about bringing the reporter along.

“You up for a trip to CIT, papergirl?”

… 

The Institute Courser was the toughest enemy Tuesday had fought yet. He seemingly absorbed whatever firepower she could throw at him, charging him two-on-one proved not just ineffectual but _counterproductive_ , as it earned Piper a laser blast to the abdomen, and he apparently possessed a Stealth Boy just to make things as difficult as possible. 

Tuesday ran out of bullets before the Courser ran out of life. She was forced to fall back to her last resort: a bladed tire iron she had picked off a raider way back at the Museum of Freedom almost a month ago. It was primitive, but it was sharp, and Tuesday backed him into the corner with it by swinging so relentlessly that he could hardly get a shot off between staggers. Once his back was to the wall he was done for. Tuesday almost felt bad for him as she pummeled him out of commission with the unlikely weapon, but once he was dead she felt nothing but relief.

She stood over his crumpled form for a moment to catch her breath. As the thrill of the battle faded, the sight of the relay chip glinting from behind his ear filled her with a whole different kind of rush. _We did it,_ she thought, the realization sinking in slowly. They’d gotten their ticket into the Institute. They finally had an advantage. They were approaching the beginning of the end.

A muffled grunt from behind reminded her that Piper was still wounded. Tuesday let the bloody tire iron clatter from her hand to the boards and spun around to look for her. There, against the railing around the center of the room, leaned Piper with her arms wrapped around her abdomen. Tuesday rushed to her side and fell to her knees without bothering to exit her power armor first, afraid that that laser blast had done more damage than she’d thought.

“How badly are you hurt? What can I do?” she asked quickly, hands hovering over the reporter’s form as her eyes tried to peer through the arms folded protectively over the wound. Then she took a closer look and stopped in confusion. “Piper?”

The younger girl was doubled over, her shoulders shaking, which was making Tuesday very concerned until Piper raised her head and revealed lips curled in a grin. She was—laughing?

Tuesday let her hands fall to her sides, totally befuddled. Why was she laughing? Had she taken a hit to the head? Breathed in too much Molotov cocktail smoke? Was she in shock? “Piper, what’s going on?”

Piper was struggling to breathe through both her laughter and her wound. It was a moment before she managed, “Did—did you just kill that thing with a _tire iron?_ ” 

Tuesday furrowed her brows. “I—yeah? I ran out of ammo.” She pointed to her combat rifle, which she’d dropped in her haste to pull out her bladed tire iron and force the Courser into the corner where he now lay. 

Piper shook her head and wiped her eye free of a mirthful tear as her laughter died to giggles. “You never fail to amaze me, Blue.”

The vault dweller let out an incredulous breath of relief, still not totally convinced that Piper wasn’t loopy. “Yeah, well, you either, papergirl,” she returned, and then switched tack quick enough that her blush didn’t have a chance to flare up. “Now do you need a stimpak or not?”

As if the words reminded Piper that she really was wounded, her smile morphed into a grimace. A look down at her abdomen revealed that she hadn’t just been holding it for kicks and giggles, as it were; a wet red stain was growing beneath her hands. “Yes, please.”

…


	7. Chapter 7

Tuesday took the chip to the Railroad, figuring if anybody had the chops to crack the Institute’s technology, it would be one of theirs. But, naturally, the underground organization would not do it for free.

That’s why Piper and Tuesday were picking along a ruined stretch of the Mass Pike alongside a shifty man in sunglasses, trusting him to lead them to an ally instead of a trap. He hadn’t given them a whole lot of details about their mission and Tuesday hadn’t been able to persuade him otherwise, so they were forced to follow blindly along behind as he tracked a trail of railsigns to their destination.

Tuesday would have thought that this sort of raised highway would be out of reach of most enemies, but the Gunners posted at the entrance and the ghouls scattered among the cars they’d passed proved otherwise.

They were passing a ruined bus right now, one whose tires had flattened into the pavement and whose paint had faded to a dull brown long ago. The door was wide open, and the gaping entry looked like an awfully good hiding place for enemies. Tuesday eyed it warily as they approached, combat rifle in hand.

Deacon, their guide, passed it without fuss, which offered her a little twinge of relief.

Too soon.

It was just as Piper began to sidle by the door that the snarl of a roused feral ghoul split the air. Too fast to track, one of the grotesque things shot out from the vehicle and tackled her, sending her staggering but not to the ground. The reporter cried out in surprise and then pain as the feral’s ragged nails dug into her flesh before she could unholster her 10mm. Even as her point-blank shot rang out, taking the feral’s head off, a second and then a third creature piled out of the bus, alerted by the noise.

In the narrow strip between the bus and the guardrail, Tuesday couldn’t fire a shot without risking hitting Piper, so she surged forward with the barrel of her rifle in her hands instead, ready to swing.

She clobbered one ghoul into the pavement before it even saw her. She turned to the second in preparation to smash it away from Piper, but just then a fourth creature spilled from the opening and ran for the nearer reporter as well. Tuesday pivoted fast to switch targets—only, Piper’s back was turned so she didn’t notice the motion, and as she dodged away from her current enemy in the same direction her shoulder came right into Tuesday’s line of fire and—

“Augh!” Piper staggered under the unexpected blow from behind and Tuesday’s gut did a painful flip as the ghoul she’d missed lunged after the reporter while her guard was down.

“Shit! Sorry!” The vault dweller flipped her gun around and got two shots off before the ghoul’s grip could close on her companion, sending it sprawling dead at her feet instead. Piper lodged a trio of bullets into the other’s chest, and it fell atop the first.

That was the last one, and afterward Tuesday was free to rush to her companion’s side, shouldering her gun in favor of reaching out steadying hands.

“Sorry! I’m sorry,” she blurted. “You stepped right in front of me and I—”

Piper’s loud groan cut her off. The reporter clutched her shoulder and rotated her arm around a few times, testing the severity of the damage. “You’ve got quite the swing, huh? Maybe I’ll go talk to Moe about getting you a Swatter.”

“Piper, really, I didn’t mean to—”

“Oh, lighten up, Blue,” the reporter interrupted without much heat, patting Tuesday’s chest plate with her undamaged hand. “I know. I’m fine.”

“But—” Tuesday’s eyes flicked to her now-certainly-bruised shoulder, swimming with guilt.

Piper waved her off. “You know well and good that I’ve been through worse.”

“But it’s not usually me who puts you through it,” Tuesday protested. At Piper’s raised eyebrow, she realized what she’d just said and how untrue it actually was. She grimaced. “Oh. Well, I mean—”

“Save it, Blue,” the reporter cut her off gently, raising her undamaged arm again to place a finger over her fumbling lips this time. “I’m all right. I promise.”

The vault dweller was so stunned at the contact that she dropped her argument entirely. She felt a blush flaring up and looked away fast to hide it, pretending to be very interested in the cracked pavement off to her right.

“If you two are done, I think I’ve spotted our informant,” Deacon spoke up smoothly from a little ways down the road. Tuesday flashed him a glare; she hadn’t seen _him_ fighting off any ferals. But they needed this mission to win the Railroad’s support, so Tuesday swallowed down her annoyance and nodded.

Turning to Piper, she murmured, “This should be right up your alley, huh? I’ll let you do the talking.”

Piper gave her a raised brow and a sideways look. Based on their past luck with Tuesday’s leaden tongue, that would probably be best for everyone. Piper told her so.

…

They had the chip, and Tuesday was ready to infiltrate the Institute in every respect—in theory. Only, she didn’t feel ready at all. Going in blind to face the most mysterious and insidious boogeyman in the Commonwealth? Facing down synths and maybe Coursers with nobody watching her back except her suit of power armor? Having the weight of the entire Commonwealth’s expectations pressing firmly on her shoulders?

Sue her for wanting to take some time to gather her wits first.

She decided on a detour south to investigate a Vault-Tec radio signal after leaving the Railroad HQ, Courser chip in hand. Helping people in the mundane, manageable respects of fighting off raiders or planting cornstalks was a much more appealing notion than blasting off into the Institute just yet. It would take her mind off of things for a minute, at least.

The signal led them to a vault just south of Hyde Park. The fight to the entrance was ridiculously grueling—since when did raiders take twenty bullets apiece to bring down?—but thanks to Tuesday’s power armor and plenty of space to maneuver, they managed to come out on top.

The resilient raiders out front turned out to be the least disturbing thing about the place. The entrance itself was deep in a quarry surrounded by radioactive muck, and the interior was populated by feral ghouls, monsters, and a single ghoul woman named Barstow who seemed concerningly Vault-Tec born and bred. The vault itself was grossly unfinished, and though Tuesday knew full well that Vault-Tec did not have the public’s best interests at heart, the thought of what _could_ have been was still painful. Tuesday’s first instinct was to leave this place buried under its sad history, but its potential as a safe settlement made her check herself.

That was the only reason she and Piper were heading up to the control room to turn on the radio beacon Barstow had described. Giving settlers a chance to live in relative peace behind a two-ton blast door was an opportunity she could not pass up. They would have to do some clearing out of hostile presences, of course, and a healthy amount of construction from scratch, but it would be a worthwhile sacrifice of time and effort.

Tuesday did not expect to get sidetracked in the control room by a pair of glasses, but her life had been anything but predictable lately.

“Huh,” she remarked absently as she approached the computer desk in the center-left of the room. She picked up the black-rimmed, slightly tinted glasses and held them up to the light. “Well, these are sexy.” They weren’t. Really, she just hadn’t seen more than a handful of the vision aids since her prewar days. It was odd, now that she thought about it, but she’d just unconsciously figured that maybe radiation had the neat side effect of making everyone’s vision perfect.

“What are?” asked Piper as she joined the vault dweller by the desk. Tuesday passed them to her just out of obligation, but to her mild surprise the reporter actually put them on. When she did, her eyebrows twitched up in surprise and her jaw dropped slightly.

“Oh,” she said very softly.

Tuesday faced her in confusion. “What?”

Piper chewed her lip like she was embarrassed. “You know,” she mused as she swiveled her head to take in the room through the gray-tinted lenses, eyes wide, “I never really gave much thought to my eyesight all these years, but maybe I should have.”

“Do those help?” Tuesday asked, feeling her lips begin to flicker toward a smile. _No way._ Apparently people _did_ still need glasses in 2287; they were evidently just difficult to come by. Or they didn’t even know it.

Piper turned toward the doorway to squint down the hall from which they’d come. Her face relaxed with a wondering laugh as the gesture apparently proved unnecessary. “I didn’t even realize I’d been flying blind this whole time. I just thought radiation made the world look fuzzy!” 

“Piper, you’re joking.” Tuesday couldn’t suppress her grin any longer. Not only was this revelation funny as hell, but she’d found that the unsexy glasses actually _did_ look kind of attractive on her friend. “You’ve been waving that pistol around for how long, and you can’t even see?”

“Hey! I can see well enough to watch your six, thank you very much,” Piper snapped back indignantly. She turned back to face the vault dweller and her hazel eyes looked a mite too big behind the lenses.

“I know. I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Tuesday said more gently, though she was still smirking. “But, seriously?” She turned toward the computer array and focused on the task they were supposed to be doing: turning on that beacon. Her next words were a mumble. “No wonder you don’t mind being around me.”

Piper heard her loud and clear. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“A girl must look a whole lot better when you can’t see the ugly scars all over her face.” Tuesday refused to look at her, resisting the urge to reach up and rub her permanently reddened cheeks (a product of poorly managed acne in her teens). She used to be able to disguise it with some makeup, but these days there weren’t a whole lot of cosmetics lying around. Now she felt bad for bringing it up.

“Blue, they’re not—“ Tuesday huffed a sardonic laugh and began to turn away, but Piper wouldn’t let her off that easily. She got right up in front of her and reached up to grab that red-stained face with firm but gentle hands. “I can see you just fine up close, and I wouldn’t change a thing,” she blurted a little too readily.

Tuesday’s eyebrows shot up in tandem with her rising blush. She and Piper had suddenly become very close—close enough for the vault dweller to make out the flecks of green in the reporter’s glasses-enlarged eyes—and combined with the heartfelt compliment she’d just spilled out like a mistake… 

Tuesday was abruptly and sorely tempted to kiss her again.

She lingered there in the reporter’s hands for a pregnant second, but a flicker of the lights above them served to remind her where they were and what they were supposed to be doing.

“We should, uh—” Tuesday was distracted by the way Piper’s gaze flickered to her lips as she spoke. _Damn it, this girl is going to be the death of me_. She swallowed hard. “We should get that beacon running.”

Piper blinked and loosened her grip on Tuesday’s face as she pulled back to a safe distance, looking every bit as flustered as the vault dweller felt. “Yeah,” she croaked out, trying to sound chipper and failing. “Yeah, okay.”

She kept the glasses.

…


	8. Chapter 8

The longer Tuesday and Piper spent time around one another, the thicker the tension grew. It wasn’t  _ bad,  _ per se, but it was a definite layer of stress that added to the weight already settled squarely on the vault dweller's shoulders.

Exacerbating the problem was the fact that Tuesday’s emotional state was even more a mess following the revelation she’d had upon entering the Institute. She’d finally worked up the nerve to face her fears, and the moment she relayed in she found that the truth was much more frightening than all the stories the Commonwealth had cooked up about the shady organization.

“I can’t believe he’s sixty fucking years old,” she choked out for seemingly the hundredth time since returning to Sanctuary. She was sunk into the couch in the yellow house that acted as their base of operations, and everyone but Piper had vacated the area to give her some space.

The reporter was curled next to her on the couch, legs tucked underneath her, leaving a respectful couple inches between them like she wasn’t exactly where they stood through all this tension. “I’m so sorry, Blue,” she murmured. Her voice was hoarse from nights without much rest, but she’d refused to leave Tuesday alone since she got back. Her well-meaning comforts were not new, but the question that followed haltingly, as if she were afraid to ask, was. “Does that...change things?”

Tuesday let her head fall back against the cushions in defeat. “I don’t know. It definitely makes things a hell of a lot more complicated,” she replied miserably. “How am I supposed to destroy this thing when my  _ son  _ is the one heading it up?” That was the question, indeed. Was she still going to be able to side with the Commonwealth when it meant turning against Shaun—not the Shaun she’d expected to find, but the one she’d lost all the same? How was she supposed to convince these people that neither side had to be enemies? The Institute wasn’t some vicious monster, and the surface world wasn’t some hopeless slum. She sighed before continuing, “He wants me to run a mission for them. Bring an escaped synth back, as a sign of my loyalty or something.” At the sour change in Piper’s expression, the vault dweller twitched upright to face her. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to join them,” she assured firmly.

Piper looked just as torn as Tuesday felt. “But…isn’t this mission the exact opposite of what the Railroad wants you to do?” she asked thinly.

Tuesday groaned and pushed both hands through her dark hair. It was growing out from its undercut, now. “Yes, but I’m not officially allied with them, either,” she reminded. Just like every other faction she’d come across. They all thought they were right, but none of them had her convinced. “I just don’t know what to do. There are too many sides to this war and I don’t have enough information on any of them.”

Piper was silent for a long moment, eyes locked on her own knees. Her freckles stood out in stark contrast against exhaustion-paled cheeks. Tuesday felt a rush of guilt for not paying more attention to her needs since returning. One trip to the Institute and it was like she was already failing her people up here.

The reporter lifted her gaze at length to fix Tuesday with steady hazel eyes. What she said perhaps should not have taken the vault dweller by surprise, but it did. “Whatever you choose, I’ll have your back, Blue.”

Tuesday raised her head to regard her with lifted brows. “Even if I choose Shaun?” At Piper’s nod, the older woman’s expression crumpled. “But, Piper, you hate the Institute.”

Piper let out a weary sigh and lowered her head. Tuesday could tell that the girl knew exactly what she was agreeing to, and though she didn’t like it, “I care about you more than I hate the Institute,” the reporter confessed softly.

Tuesday was floored. This was the  _ Institute  _ they were talking about. The one Piper had been raised to believe was evil. The one she’d devoted the better part of her life to opposing. “But—you’ve been fighting them for all this time,” she protested. “All the papers you’ve published. All the people they’ve hurt—”

Piper cut her off with a look so intense it seemed to burn straight into her. There was a sadness behind it; a quiet hope that her friend  _ wouldn’t _ ask her to sacrifice the beliefs of a lifetime, whether she was willing to or not. “I said what I said.”

“Piper.” Tuesday was choked up by a sudden, overwhelming rush of  _ gratitude  _ for this girl. What had she ever done to deserve Piper? The emotion made her bold, and she grasped the reporter’s hands across the dingy couch cushions and ventured on: “Thank you. But I care too much about  _ you  _ to ask that of you.”

Piper must have known what she was implying, because she pulled gently away. “Don’t,” she pleaded with a shake of her head. “Don’t let me stop you from making whatever choice you think is right. You’re the hero of the Commonwealth, for crying out loud. You’re basically the deciding vote in who wins this war. Me, I’m just—” She scoffed in disgust and pushed to her feet like she could leave the truth behind on the couch. It didn’t work. “I’m just Piper; loud, pushy Public Nuisance Number One.” She glared down at her lightly scarred, ink-stained hands.

Something about that bitter phrase made all the feelings Tuesday had been wrestling with surge up and barrel through her mind like a freight train. Before she could stop them, they pushed one thought to the forefront with perfect clarity and it tumbled from her lips in a rush. “You’re perfect to me.”

Piper froze. Her shoulders went stiff as a board. A beat passed while the words hung unrecanted in the air, and then she turned slowly back to Tuesday, her eyes wide and uncertain like she wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “Wh-what?”

Too late to back out now, Tuesday figured. Though her gut twisted anxiously, this was as good a time as any to break the tension between them. She couldn’t just let it grow until it smothered them. She had to tell Piper how she felt at some point; had to know if the feeling was mutual.

She hopped off the couch to narrow the distance between them. “You told me I had to let go,” she started, knowing that this was a fairly roundabout explanation but she had to follow the thought through before she lost momentum and it slipped away forever. “Of Nate. And I’ve been trying, and I’ve been thinking, and somewhere along the way I realized that you’re the most important thing to me in this bloody new world and I want you by my side. For good.” She paused to gauge Piper’s reaction but couldn’t discern much more than shock in her hazel eyes. She didn’t stop. “And—if that means destroying the Institute, Shaun or no Shaun, to keep you safe, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.” Another pause, and the fear was catching up to Tuesday. What if Piper turned her down? She rushed on before the notion could discourage her. “You’re the best thing I’ve found out here, Piper. I’m just sorry it happened two hundred years late.”

Piper was completely still, completely quiet, for what seemed like an eternity. When she finally spoke, it was barely a whisper. “What are you saying, Blue?”

“I’m—I’m saying I choose you,” Tuesday explained almost desperately, begging Piper to understand. To reciprocate. “Before any other side in this war.”

Another long, tense moment hung between them before Piper gathered herself and took a slow step toward the vault dweller; hesitant, as if she wasn’t totally sure this was real. Her eyes flickered over Tuesday’s face, reading her reaction. When she found nothing but raw hope there, she took another step, hand half-outstretched but held back by the lingering traces of uncertainty. A final pause stole all the air in the room. Then Tuesday opened her arms and Piper crossed the final distance into them with a shuddering exhale. It felt like a key sliding into a lock; like falling into a soft bed after a grueling day; like coming home. It felt like sweet relief. 

Tuesday and Piper held each other tightly as if to communicate all the words they still hadn’t been able to say. It made up for all the weeks of awkwardness, uncertainty, and pain that had kept them apart until now. It let them simply exist together, closer than they had ever hoped before.

Piper was the first to break the comfortable silence. Her breath a tempting breeze on the vault dweller’s neck, she whispered, “I feel the same way, Blue.”

Tuesday sighed gratefully into her hair. She was frustrated that it had taken her this long to work up the nerve to confess (if her meandering prose could even be called that), but at the same time she knew this had been the best possible moment for their feelings to come to light. She wasn’t totally satisfied yet, though.

“Does this, uh,” she began tentatively, pulling back enough to look Piper in the face. “Does this mean we’re—?” She couldn’t decide whether to focus on the reporter’s eyes or her lips, especially when those lips began to curl in a smile, raw and joyful and everything bright about Piper packaged into one radiant look.

Thankfully, the reporter decided for her by leaning in hesitantly; pausing for one breathless second before taking a leap of faith and catching Tuesday’s own lips in a kiss. It was just as light as their brief contact before the Glowing Sea, but longer, more certain. The vault dweller tightened her grip on the reporter’s waist in silent approval, and when Piper pulled back, her grin had grown impossibly more blinding. 

“Yeah,” she replied simply. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

…

Tuesday took Piper along on the  _ mission  _ Father had assigned her as a kind of preliminary test. It felt less wrong that way; like a compromise between the two diametrically opposed halves of her world.

They had just reached the shack built into the ruins of the Libertalia cargo ship, and while X6-88 scouted ahead a few rooms, the two women took the chance to enjoy a welcome breather.

“Nights like these, a warm spot with a cold beer would be heaven,” Piper’s voice cut the quiet, softly for once.

Tuesday looked over to see her leaning against the open doorway of the shack, gaze aimed out over the impressive view this place commanded. The ocean stretched black and unknown to the horizon on their right, and the faint silhouette of Boston to the distant left. Piper’s face was framed against it in striking profile. The ruddy light from the cabin fell over her figure in stark contrast to the blue nightscape, and the scene was like something straight out of a prewar painting.

It made something warm and serene bloom in Tuesday’s chest, and she gave in to the urge to say, “That can be arranged, once we’re done here,” in a low tone. Just a short time ago she would have kept such suggestive quips to herself, but after their conversation back at Sanctuary, her fears that she and Piper weren’t on the same page had been assuaged. She no longer felt the same gnawing uncertainty when she met Piper’s eyes and held them, or the same nervousness when a hint of a blush tinted the reporter’s cheeks. She was even less tripped up by her guilt over Nate after these few months.

She felt freer, and the feeling was reflected right back in the grin that Piper returned her.

“Maybe I’ll take you up on that.”

It was then that X6 reentered the room, laser rifle across his chest, and reported, “The way is clear until the captain’s cabin. The door is locked.”

Piper gave the vault dweller a knowing wiggle of her brows. “Nothing Blue can’t handle, I’m sure,” she endorsed.

Tuesday took that as her cue to get moving again, following the Courser to the door a few flights of stairs above. The blue metal door was indeed locked tight, but one look at the mechanism told her that it wouldn’t take more than a minute to crack.

“Watch my back,” she said to X6 as she crouched down in front of the lock, sliding her bobby pins out of a tiny compartment in her belt. She mostly wanted him as far from her as possible until she trusted the Institute more (which wasn’t guaranteed to  _ ever  _ happen). She was comforted when Piper took up a position closer to her side than the synth, eyeing him even more warily. It let her focus completely on the lock, manipulating the tumblers until one, two, and then all three of them slid into place. The catch released under her practiced touch, and she straightened up and pocketed her bobby pins in the same motion, letting out a satisfied, “There it is,” quiet enough that it wouldn’t reach the ears of any enemies lying in wait on the other side. 

Piper gave an impressed grunt. “Can’t keep you out,” she murmured as she came up behind Tuesday, pistol trained on the newly accessible door to the captain’s cabin.

The vault dweller looked back and half-smiled at their unintended closeness. “You should see what else these hands can do.” 

It was out of her mouth before she could check herself, and hers and Piper’s eyes widened at the same time before flicking anxiously to X6 behind them. He either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t comprehended her double meaning, which was a slight relief, but Tuesday grimaced anyway. Two overtly flirtatious comments in one trip? Maybe she was getting a little  _ too  _ comfortable with this newfound freedom between herself and Piper.

“Sorry. I didn’t think,” she backpedaled, not sure if the crimson in Piper’s cheeks was a good sign.

“No. No, obviously not,” conceded Piper in a tone humorous enough to give Tuesday some relief. She kept her gaze trained stubbornly down her weapon’s sights, though, refusing to look the vault dweller in the eye. Tuesday was concerned by that until Piper cleared her throat abruptly and, cheeks turning darker, added stumblingly, “But I, uh—ahem. Might, uh, take you up on that too, sometime.” She spared a half-second glance to judge Tuesday’s reaction and the endearment of the nervous little gesture, combined with the unexpected turn of what she’d thought was a ruined conversation, made the vault dweller break into a grin.

“You’re awfully smooth for just a public nuisance,” she teased, gratified by the embarrassed smile that Piper aimed at the ground for that. She may have responded, but X6 suddenly reminded them of his presence with a short noise.

“Ladies,” he cut in, and his voice was even firmer than usual. “We have a mission.”

“Right. Sorry.” Tuesday refocused her attention on the door, raising her rifle (and if her eyes cut back to Piper’s for an instant and found the reporter watching her, too, well, she supposed that wasn’t a problem).

…


	9. Chapter 9

After X6’s departure, Tuesday put off returning to Father. In all honesty, she was afraid of what he would ask of her next. Libertalia had been a mission with some external benefit to those living under the raiders’ thumb, but only because the rogue synth had happened to be their leader. She doubted that her next mission would happen to be so kind, if only because it was the Institute she was dealing with. Their goodwill only went as far as their own best interests.

That's why she’d taken a detour to check on Vault 88’s progress rather than reporting back to her son (it was still unsettling to think of him that way). She was prepared to build some more beds; plant some more corn.

She hadn’t expected the Super Mutants.

They arrived shortly after she and Piper did. The first sign of intruders was the smell; the rotten stench of old, bloody meat wafting in through the corridor. After that came the heavy footfalls, and then the bellowing voices. It was too late to shut the blast door.

Even with her power armor, Tuesday was no match for the eight mutants and two hounds that poured into the vault in a seemingly endless stream. She and Piper were forced to fall back (meaning, Tuesday  _ dragged  _ Piper back) to the atrium under a hail of minigun fire, where they would have backup.

Not everyone had made it out unscathed.

Tuesday knelt now in front of the body of a settler, eerily similar to the scenes with Nate and Kent and more she didn’t want to think about. She couldn’t take her eyes from the unseeing gaze of the poor old woman. It had been sharp and alive just moments ago, when she was asking if there was anything she could help with around the vault.

She probably hadn’t meant this.

Piper found her where she sat soberly in the offshoot corridor. She took in the scene instantly and Tuesday heard her give a quiet sigh. “Blue…that’s not your fault,” she said gently into the stillness.

Tuesday shook her head and refused to look at her. “I should have kept them confined to the entrance. If I hadn’t fallen back here like a coward—”

“There were  _ eight  _ of them, Blue, plus the hounds. They would have killed us both and you know it.”

“Better them than us? Is that it?” Tuesday demanded, voice sharp with pain, as she gestured back at the rest of the vault. It wasn’t fair, because she  _ knew  _ that Piper was just trying to make her feel better, but she was tired of this. She was tired of not being able to protect people. Tired of staring down at the bodies at her feet, regretting that she had not done more. Tired of fearing that maybe someone else—maybe someone like Piper—would be next. The worst thing about trying to help everyone was the simple, agonizing fact that she  _ couldn’t. _ And yet what was there to do but try?

Piper fell silent for a second, hurt. It took a moment for her to recover, but when she did she sighed again in sympathy and knelt beside her companion. She gazed down at the settler on the ground, who had only just arrived at the vault, and reached out to gently close the old woman’s unseeing eyes. It was then that Tuesday realized Piper’s hand was shaking.

She’d reached out and closed her own around it before either of them knew what was happening. A breath of surprise was all Piper got out before Tuesday pulled her into an almost desperate hug, pouring all she  _ meant  _ to say into the welcome contact.

“Whoa, Blue, take it easy,” Piper said jokingly, though the feeling behind the words was anything but. Her hand came up to run through Tuesday’s dark hair and soothe away the pain. When she spoke next, it was at a murmur: “You’re doing everything you can.”

And that was the truth, but whether it was really a comfort or a condemnation, Tuesday hadn’t yet decided.

…

Overseer Barstow was concerningly bent on building her vaguely sinister prototype devices. Her latest task for Blue was to search the Hallucigen, Inc. building for some chemical research that definitely might turn out to be deadly in some capacity. Blue agreed to the mission regardless of its implications, and Piper suspected that this was her way of making it up to Vault 88. Atoning for the settler’s unintended death. She didn’t bring it up, because she didn’t want to cause her companion any more pain than she was already in, but she prepared to talk Blue down if things got out of hand. The last thing they needed was for the vault dweller to throw herself into unnecessary danger in some misguided attempt to redeem herself.

As usual, the two of them received more trouble than they bargained for. The building was full of stoned Gunners wringing each other’s throats under the influence of some leaked toxins in the air. As soon as they laid eyes on the intruders, they charged them, too.

The moment they’d stepped in the door and Piper got a lungful of the tainted air, she gagged. It felt like it burned her throat.

Blue turned to her instantly and rummaged in her bag for the gas mask she’d picked up long ago. It had probably seemed more useful at the time than it turned out to be—the radiation could get you, gas mask or not. But now Piper was thankful for it. She reached out to take it before remembering herself.

“Wait. You need it more,” she said, drawing back her hand. Her body was used to bullshit like this. Blue had only been out here for a few months. If anybody needed extra protection it was her.

“I have my helmet,” the vault dweller returned. She rarely used the helmet of her power armor (“It screws up my peripheral vision.”), but she kept it in her bag, too, which she now demonstrated. She put it over her head, where it clicked into place with the armor frame. “I’ll be fine.” Her voice was distorted by the extra layer.

Sighing, Piper accepted the gas mask and pulled it on. She still preferred for Blue to have it, as the power armor wasn’t specifically designed to filter out toxins like the mask was, but she wasn’t going to throw a fit in a nest full of enemies. The two pressed on.

It was the basement where they met their toughest foe yet. Not another gangster with a gun, but a dilemma.

There, beside the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, leaned a Gunner who didn’t immediately try to shoot them on sight. Piper wondered why—whether he was injured, or unarmed, or uncharacteristically merciful—until she heard the stream of gibberish pouring from the young man’s lips.

The clearest thing she could make out was, “Kitty. Bad kitty. Go away!” and the nonsense made her stop in her tracks and stare.

“What the hell?” Blue grumbled from beside her.

“The gas,” realized Piper quickly. Instead of the toxic air turning this Gunner violent, it must have made him loopy. She looked to Blue through her plexiglass lenses. “What should we do?”

The vault dweller’s expression was unreadable behind the power armor helmet. She simply stood there for a long moment, watching the man writhe and groan into the toxic air, gun held limp by her side. When she finally spoke, it was so soft it barely even escaped her helmet. “I don’t know.”

The unexpected pain in Blue’s voice startled Piper, but she supposed it shouldn’t have. Here Blue was, faced with another moral dilemma in the midst of a world that was already crushing her with lose-lose decisions from every side. Why shouldn’t she be upset? If they saved the guy, they risked letting him recover into a life of violence again. If they left him here, he was as good as dead. And if they killed him themselves, well, that was a no-brainer. Piper felt torn. Blue didn’t deserve this kind of weight resting on her shoulders.

The only thing Piper could think to do was shift some of the burden to herself. “We can try to take him with us,” she decided, so Blue wouldn’t have to. When the vault dweller’s eyes landed on her in something like surprise, Piper tried to force down a blush, even though Blue couldn’t see it. “What he does after that is on him. But this is on us,” she said, managing to infuse a little steel into her voice.

Blue’s lips twitched up in a hesitant smile behind her helmet. Did Piper dare to believe that it looked…proud? “Okay, papergirl,” she conceded, and her tone definitely backed up Piper’s girlish hopes, so it was good that she bent down to haul the Gunner into her arms just then and missed the silly grin on her face.

They carried the hallucinating young man with them toward the exit (well; Blue did the carrying—power armor and all), and though his ramblings definitely didn’t help them in the stealth department, Piper was able to feel good about herself for once. They were doing something selfless. They were doing something kind. Not everything in this world was bad.

Piper looked fondly at Blue’s back as they navigated their way out.  _ Yeah. Not everything. _

But the Gunner died in the hail of gunfire that ensued in the next room, because if the Commonwealth was good for one thing, it was rooting out any flicker of hope and quashing it out with a vengeance.

…

Tuesday wished she could say that they emerged from Hallugicen into an empty, peaceful stretch of the city where they could take a breather before preparing for the way home. But alas, the Commonwealth really did seem dead set on killing them, too.

Their exit brought them right out into Charles View Amphitheater, whose inhabitants seemed nice for all of five minutes before Brother What’s-his-nuts turned on them and demanded everything they owned. Even if Tuesday had been inclined to do what he asked in the interest of finding some  _ higher enlightenment,  _ there was no way she’d be keen on letting Piper give up that sexy red trench coat of hers. So when she politely declined and the cult ringleader threatened them with death, they didn’t have much choice but to fight their way out of there.

Tuesday was glad she’d had her power armor along for the trip, because the Pillars of the Community seemed to swarm in from every direction like angry bees wielding bats and blades. She and Piper were hard-pressed to fight off all of them unscathed simply because of their sheer numbers.

They made it out, though, thanks to Piper’s quick reflexes and a few long shots with Tuesday’s rifle. Her last shot was the most impressive. It was a cultist running at Piper while her back was turned who earned the brutal snipe to the head. Tuesday usually hated shooting to kill in such a way, but she wasn’t about to gamble with Piper’s safety. The cultist’s brains painted the concrete as his body slid to a stop mere inches from the reporter. The shot still echoed around the amphitheater.

Piper cut wide eyes between the fallen man and the vault dweller. She must not have noticed his approach. “Wow,” she remarked hoarsely. She had to clear her throat before continuing, “You…you really held your own there, Blue.”

Tuesday crossed the slight rise back toward her companion. Her nerves were still prickling from the fight; her senses on extreme alert. As she reached Piper she raked her eyes over her whole form, looking for damage she may have missed. “He was running at you with a tire iron,” she explained in a tight voice. 

“So you really held  _ my  _ own,” Piper corrected herself softly, facing Tuesday with a look all too tender and grateful for their current position standing over a headless dead body.

The vault dweller inched closer, feeling all her protectiveness and fondness and conviction and  _ want  _ for this girl funnel into her chest cavity at the same time, threatening to make her burst at the seams. But again, headless dead body, so Tuesday wrenched her attention away from where it had fallen to Piper’s lips and cleared her throat. Some things never changed, and her terrible timing seemed to be one of those things.

“We’d better get out of the open,” she said gently, gratified by the way the reporter stared at  _ her  _ lips as she spoke.

They were definitely going to have to find someplace private to stay soon.

…


	10. Chapter 10

It was dusk of the next day that they made it back to Sanctuary.

Blue of course was diligent enough to report back to Preston before taking any time to herself. Only once she’d informed him that they’d checked in on the Nordhagen Beach settlers while on the coast did she retire to what used to be the laundry room of the central yellow house and finally close the door—literally—on responsibility.

She’d scrapped the washing and drying machines and repurposed the room as a bedroom a long time ago. It was now home to two beds and a steamer trunk, one of which currently supported Piper’s splayed frame.

"It may be constantly trying to kill us, but the Commonwealth never lacks for excitement,” she grumbled to the ceiling as Blue walked in. Now that she was stationary, the ache of travel and combat was seeping cruelly into her limbs, and she wanted nothing more than to pass out right then and there. Except—she did want something more. As Blue shut the door behind her and effectively rendered them alone, her heart sped up.

“I could do with a little less excitement around here, to be honest,” Blue admitted in the same tired tone as she crossed to the steamer trunk. There, she deposited her heavy pack without bothering to sort through its contents first and began to rifle underneath for a more comfortable set of clothes. She came up with a Gunner flannel with patches on the elbows and a pair of worn jeans and stripped to change into them on the spot (which Piper did _not_ watch, of course). They practically hung off of her lean frame, but must have felt loads better than the combat armor she’d had on.

Piper stood to follow suit, sliding off her red trench coat to lay it in the trunk beside Blue’s stuff, exposing her bare arms to the chilly Commonwealth air. It was really just an excuse to get closer to Blue and she knew it. Piper was just so sick of _waiting._

And Blue seemed to feel it, too. She turned as Piper came up beside her and reached to tuck a lock of dark hair behind the reporter’s ear. “How are you doing?” she breathed into the mostly-dark, eyes roving over Piper’s face before catching on her own.

“Considering I’m safe at Sanctuary, with you, alone, I’d say I’m pretty damn good,” Piper whispered back with a smile coming to life on her lips. The past several days while they’d been out traveling, fighting, surviving, navigating the nuances of the Commonwealth’s factions, and providing for startup settlements all over the map, the tension between them had again grown higher and higher, in a new way this time. It was thrilling, in a sense, if absolutely frustrating that they could not do anything about it until they reached a lull in the action. Now that they’d reached that lull, well…neither of them had to say much before all that suppressed feeling was rushing to the surface, ready to be lit aflame like oil on water.

Blue moved first. With a long, drawn-out inhale like she was steadying herself, she took Piper by the hips and pressed her back a step; two, three, until her back hit the blasted-out wall. The reporter felt her own breathing quicken, deepen, as those peerless gray eyes pinned her with warm _intent_ and all she’d wanted since laying eyes on this dashing wastelander careened toward her like an oncoming vertibird.

Piper wasn’t scared, necessarily, but her heart still felt like it was climbing up her throat as Blue inched in further; bringing them almost nose to nose. The air between them practically hummed with electricity as their bated breaths mixed across the tiny distance. The vault dweller’s face was dimly lit on one side by the last remnants of the sunset streaming through the battered wall. The luminance turned her gray eyes bronze, and Piper lost herself in them through heavy lids. Blue hadn’t even kissed her yet and Piper’s insides felt like a plucked cord sending shockwaves through her form. She hadn’t realized how much she _needed_ this. 

But still Blue held back, hovering just on the verge of letting their lips touch as if giving Piper the chance to back out.

Piper had no idea why she would ever do that.

Instead she did just the opposite, taking Blue’s face in her hands and closing the final distance to mold their mouths together.

And—

This was so different from their kiss from before. The one they’d shared in this very house what seemed like ages ago. That had been perfect for its time, short and sweet and meaningful, but _this—_

The best word Piper could think of to describe it was _thorough._ As they leaned into each other across the ruins of their impatience, neither wasted a single motion; a single breath; a single second in their exploration of one another. Blue’s lips locked firmly with Piper’s and her tongue was swiping, uncertainly at first and then more boldly, into her mouth and somehow it wasn’t gross at all; only _exciting,_ and Piper could only fumble along in Blue’s wake, trying to make up for her inexperience with enthusiasm. She fell obviously short, but she wasn’t embarrassed; her nervousness was gone; dashed aside by the sensation of absolute security she felt in Blue’s embrace. Blue was patient, and, needless to say, she was a _great_ teacher; guiding Piper’s efforts by shining example.

The reporter couldn’t stifle a pleased hum as Blue’s hands slid deliberately up from her hips to her ribcage, leaving goosebumps in their wake. Then they kept going, coming right up to the bottom edge of her bra, and Piper jolted at the contact. 

Her thoughts were a scatter for a moment. _Shit_ was front and center, followed by _keep going_ and then a jumble of memories that reminded her that Blue might not be up for that. And then, the one that stuck: _how the hell is this real?_ How had Blue, the walking legend of the Commonwealth, chosen _her?_ How had Piper ended up here, pinned against the wall in her room, the object of her affection? Surely it was just the radiation catching up with her.

But then Blue’s hands skated higher along her ribcage; avoiding her breasts but for the slightest brush of her thumbs, and it felt _undeniably_ real _._

So real that Piper’s next inhale was reduced to a shuddering gasp. She had to break away suddenly to get enough air into her lungs. It felt like she’d been punched. If being punched made you feel very hot and achy in new places as well as knocking the air out of you.

Instantly Blue backed off. The sunlight through the wall was fading, but her eyes still shined bright. There was concern in them. “Are you okay?” she asked, and Piper took another hit to the gut when the vault dweller’s voice came out a little thick; a little hoarse.

She let out her breath in a shaky sigh. When she raised her hand to brush a strand of hair out of her face, just to have something to focus on besides _oh, God, Blue,_ it was trembling just as hard. Her face grew hotter. “O-of course, Blue, I just— _wow_.” Internally, she groaned. Trust the reporter to lose her grasp on the English language as soon as words got important.

Blue, understandably, hesitated, her brow furrowing. “What?” Her hands started to fall away, but Piper was quick to intercept them.

“You really have no idea how crazy this is for me, do you?” she managed. She cradled the vault dweller’s hands in her own, holding them to her chest like they were precious—because Blue _was—_ and went on: “You’re the one who changed my whole world. The one who’s _saving_ the whole world. You’re basically a living legend, and I’m—well, _me,_ and—and—” Piper swore her ears were going to burst into flame if she blushed any harder. She met Blue’s gray eyes almost bashfully, wondering if she was just sticking her foot in her mouth for the millionth time in her life. “Kissing you is like kissing, I don’t know, _God._ ”

Blue let out a snort, but her lips curled in a little grin that revealed her pleasure. “I’m just a regular woman, Piper,” she reminded.

Piper matched her smile. “A woman who can do everything.”

“You know that’s not true.” Blue’s voice fell to a murmur as they came within an inch of each other again, drawn as if magnetically.

Piper’s gaze was glued to her lips. “True enough for me,” she breathed, and she’d never felt so sure of anything in her life.

Blue leaned back in. It was harder, this time; more earnest. Piper threw her arms around the vault dweller’s neck and lost herself in the feeling.

She was so caught up, in fact, that she didn’t notice the way Blue was adjusting her grip and bracing her stance till she was suddenly hoisted into the air, weightless for a split second until her back came against the wall. A surprised noise jumped from her throat as the sudden change made their mouths lose contact, but a single look from her new perspective revealed that it was definitely _better_ this way, 

Blue gave her a hot, steady look before leaning in this time, and that look combined with the realization that the vault dweller's hands were now firmly gripping her thighs to hold her up stirred something in Piper that she hadn’t felt since…ever. It was frightening, sort of, except this was Blue and she was the safest place in the entire Commonwealth and Piper was totally immersed in her. So she let herself feel it: the tension, the ache, and wondered exactly how far Blue intended to let her explore.

The growing pulse deep in her gut only intensified when Blue broke off the kiss to trail her lips down Piper’s neck instead, earning an unintentional moan that the reporter quickly slapped her hand over in embarrassment. Of all things, Blue _laughed_ against the crook of her neck—then nipped it with gentle teeth, jolting yet another noise out of Piper’s throat.

Blue chased that response, attacking the same spot in such a way that Piper could barely breathe between suppressed groans of pleasure. Then her back was off the wall and there was nothing but air behind her as Blue stepped back and turned them toward the bed. Piper wasn’t surprised, really, but a healthy shock still went through her as Blue dropped her onto the mattress.

Then, looking up, the vault dweller must have registered the haze in Piper’s eyes because abruptly she deflated, stepping back and letting out her bated breath in a sigh. She dropped her gaze almost like she was ashamed. 

Piper immediately sat up and reached for her hand, searching her face for a sign of what she’d done wrong, because that _had_ to be it; she had a habit of scaring people away and even after everything—

But when Blue met her eyes she smiled, a little sadly but with so much raw affection that it took Piper’s breath away. “I—I’m sorry,” the vault dweller began weakly. “I should probably tell you now, I—”

“Don’t really like sex?” Piper felt confident that those were going to be Blue’s words. By the other woman’s stunned reaction, she’d guessed correctly (thank God). She let a little smirk pull at her lips. “Yeah, you said.”

Blue was wide-eyed. “Wh-what? When?”

“That night at the Third Rail. The one you don’t remember.”

She paled. “Oh, God. Please tell me I didn’t—”

“No. You were perfect, same as always.” Piper shifted her hands to run them soothingly up and down Blue’s arms, pulling her gently closer so she had to brace a knee against the mattress to keep her balance. She swallowed hard at the position it put them in: Blue half-straddling her seated lap. “It was about Magnolia.”

“Oh.” Blue, relieved, let her head fall into the crook of Piper’s neck. “I’m sorry, that must have been so awkward.” Her voice vibrated against the sensitive skin there.

“I didn’t mind,” Piper replied. _I really didn’t._ She reached up to stroke the back of her vault dweller’s undercut. “And I still don’t. I won’t ever ask you to do something you aren’t comfortable with, Blue.”

The older woman raised her head sharply. Her gray eyes locked with hazel, her mouth dropped open slightly, and for a long moment she just stared at the reporter like she’d just won the lottery. Then she gave a little laugh of surprise and reached up to clasp Piper’s hand in her own. “Piper, I love you,” she confessed suddenly, like it was the most natural thing in the world. And—

Oh.

_Oh._

It was Piper’s turn to gape. _How the hell is this real?_ was running through her mind again, on repeat at light speed.

Blue didn’t seem to expect her to reply. Instead, she quirked a little smile and took the opportunity to lean back in and capture Piper’s lips again; gentle but oh-so-powerful. The reporter didn’t even try to hold back the helpless mewl that floated from her throat this time. Blue met it with a low groan and pressed into her with careful hands, and Piper gave in to her clear intentions.

She lost her breath again as her back hit the mattress and Blue hemmed her in with a knee on either side. It was different, looking up at Blue this way instead of down like she had moments ago. But it was different in a good way. With the cushion of the bed at her back and the softness of Blue’s touch at her front, she was safe from the world. She was taken care of. And that, she realized, meant more to her deepest self than she had ever presumed.

“I love you, too,” she said breathlessly. And as soon as it was out there; as soon as it hung in the space between them like the pleasant scent of growing things, she knew it had always belonged there. 

Blue only beamed. Then she was leaning into Piper again, fingers finding the tangled locks of her hair, lips finding their matching pair like she wanted to know what those precious words tasted like. Piper was all too willing to show her.

They only paused long enough for Blue to pull back and ask softly, “Is this okay for tonight?” because of course she did. Of course she was perfect.

_Always,_ Piper thought, but saved the word for another time. The air between them was warm enough already, tonight. Instead she simply hummed in contentment, reaching up to slide her arms loosely around the vault dweller’s waist. “Better than I could have ever dreamed of,” she said. 

And she meant it.

…

Tuesday woke to warmth, and though that wasn’t necessarily unfamiliar, it was a lot _closer_ than she was used to.

It took her a few moments to rise to the surface of the grayish fog of unconsciousness. When she did, she let her eyes crack open gradually, intending to savor the sight that she woke up to—and savor it she did. Piper was passed out next to her, still rumpled from last night, hat gone and dark hair spilled over the mattress, her face practically glowing in the morning sunlight. In the beams that cut through the cracks in the walls, Tuesday could make out her faint spray of freckles and every pale scar that interrupted her skin’s smooth surface. She had the urge to reach out and run her fingers over those marks, guessing at the history behind each one, but she didn’t want to wake her companion too soon.

But Piper must have sensed her wakefulness anyway, because it wasn’t long before a deep breath and a sigh marked her own rise to the land of the living. She took even longer to regain awareness than Tuesday had, and the process was nothing if not adorable. She furrowed her brows first against the sun in her face, and then her mouth twitched down in a frown. She tried to raise a hand to block out the light but her palm brushed Tuesday and instantly her sour expression eased.

“Hey, papergirl,” the vault dweller whispered now that Piper had remembered where she was.

The reporter stretched, long and luxurious, and let her head tip to the side to regard her companion with sparkling half-shut eyes. “Lovely night,” she remarked, lips curling in a half-grin, and all the fresh memories of those lips on hers hit Tuesday like a freight train.

Her breath came out in a huff, and she passed it off as a chuckle. “You can say that again,” she murmured as she roused herself enough to roll partly on top of Piper and lay a kiss in the hollow where her collarbones met. The contact had the desired effect: the younger woman let out a pleased groan and let her head fall back against the mattress, her free hand coming up to slide into Tuesday’s hair.

And—all this was so _new_ and rather unexpected _,_ and normally Tuesday would have felt frightened or at least nervous because people _always_ pushed for sex, even after she explained herself, but she knew in her deepest self that Piper was different. Piper was better.

So she didn’t feel any pressure to do anything besides lower herself back to the mattress, loosely tangled up with the girl she supposed she loved, and enjoy a couple minutes of leisure before getting up to start the day. Piper rested her head on her chest and shared in the simple contentment, and _that,_ Tuesday thought, was what made this—all of this—so lovely.

…


	11. Chapter 11

The peace couldn’t last, naturally. 

Blue had to make a decision about the Institute. About the war.

She got her reluctant chance when Father sent her to reclaim some more rogue synths; not so different from the last mission, except this time the Railroad and the Brotherhood had known they were coming. Bunker Hill quickly went from a trading post and a sanctuary to a battleground once again; steeped in chaos and blood.

They arrived at the gates with the Courser Father had sent along, X4-19. He was even colder and less likeable than X6-88, if such a thing were possible. He pretended to defer to Blue’s judgment, but the tone of his voice when he spoke made it clear that they had no choice but to execute the mission for the Institute. 

Or, almost no choice.

Piper jumped in shock when Blue’s rifle fired once, the sound lost among a hundred other gunshots from the hill just behind them, and X4-19 slumped to the ground, dead. 

A startled silence followed the vault dweller’s sudden betrayal.

Piper’s eyes flickered back and forth between her companion and the fallen synth, struggling to wrap her head around what had just happened. Blue had just shot their escort! Their Institute escort! “Blue, are you—are you sure about this?” she hissed out between her teeth. When Blue only stared down at the body, face deathly pale, Piper sidled in front of her to draw her attention. The fear and shock in her expression were apparently enough to make Blue look doubtful for a second.

Then, “Yes,” the vault dweller told her, rough but firm.

Piper’s heart was speeding up rapidly. She knew they’d talked about this before; that Blue had promised, way back in the yellow house at Sanctuary, that she’d turn on the Institute if she had to, but—

Now, it was real. And now she was frightened. “You won’t be able to go back to the Institute,” she reminded a little frantically, and wondered why Blue looked infinitely calmer than she felt. “You won’t be able to see Shaun.” She hadn’t really expected Blue to go through with this. Not when her son was at stake. Not when Piper was just…Piper. 

Blue looked away. “I lost Shaun sixty years ago in Vault 111.”

“Tuesday…” Even though it was too late—even though this was what Piper _wanted,_ deep down—she couldn’t help but feel like somehow it was a mistake.

But when Blue raised her head again and met Piper’s eyes, her gray ones were hard as steel. “The Institute may not be the monster in the closet that everyone on the surface thinks they are,” she said, unwavering. “But they’re still _wrong._ They don’t care about anyone but themselves.” She spread her hand to indicate the bloodbath taking place all over Bunker Hill. People on all sides of the war were dying; felled by bullets that could have come from friend just as well as foe. Whole ranks of warriors were running into the hailstorm in defense of their cause, and for what? “All this for a few synths. And so many other scenes just like it,” Blue lamented. She turned away from the sight like it physically hurt, then drew a deep, shaky breath. Her next words were aimed at the ground. “When I first arrived there, I met a synth version of Shaun as a boy. He—the real Shaun—wanted me to see it.” Her voice seemed to shrink. “He wanted to see how I would react.”

Piper was horrified. She was not, however, very surprised. “Like some…some sick experiment?” she demanded, her previous fears slipping away to be replaced by anger. Every time she thought the Institute might deserve an inkling of respect or consideration, they did something awful and fucked it all up again. And this time Blue was part of the collateral damage. She found her eyes dropping to X4’s crumpled form and felt the sudden urge to kick it. Or shoot it again, just for good measure. Maybe a few times.

“That’s what everything is to them,” Blue said hollowly, pulling Piper out of her violent fantasies. Her dry swallow was audible. “So yes, I’m sure. I never want to help them again.”

Piper didn’t have the words to express the mingled sympathy and rage that was bubbling in her chest at that moment. All she could think to do was place a hand on her shoulder in an attempt at comfort, and Blue instantly covered it with her own and squeezed. 

“Let’s go save some synths, then.”

… 

Tuesday couldn’t go back to the Institute after that, obviously. She’d known what she was doing, and she was far from regretful of her decision, but that didn’t mean it didn‘t hurt to burn away the resulting loose ends.

The lightning-strike of Shaun’s— _Father’s—_ relay back to the Institute was a jarring crack, and afterward all was still.

Tuesday fell to her knees in the wake of all she’d lost.

“Everything I’ve done since I left the vault…everything I went through to find Shaun and get him back…” Tuesday spread her hands limply between her knees and stared at them. “All to just end up like this.”

It barely registered when Piper came to kneel beside her and placed a comforting hand on her back. The clouds roiled and the wind whistled, but it all seemed miles away. 

The reporter was rarely at a loss for words, but right now it took her a long moment to find any. “I can’t imagine how you’re feeling,” she eventually began, haltingly. There was an uncertain rasp to her voice. “…but it wasn’t all for nothing. You’ve helped a lot of people, Blue, and Shaun or no Shaun, that’s worth something.” Her hand slid to Tuesday’s far shoulder so that her arm was wrapped around her.

Tuesday leaned into her unconsciously. “I know,” she replied, but it didn’t sound altogether convinced. Probably because she wasn’t. She had helped people, sure, but it didn’t make much of a difference in the long term. There were always more raiders; always more mutants; always more disasters ready to strike. There was always going to be evil in the world and one mortal person was never going to be strong enough to stop it all. She had taken solace in the fact that her _own_ life was one she could change—by avenging her husband and finding her son—but now that she’d done that, she realized that in the end even that was a lie. She was powerless and meaningless and everything she did was simply an attempt to put off her sad fate for a meager increment longer.

Tuesday didn’t realize there were tears escaping her eyes until Piper shuffled around to face her and wipe them away with a tender thumb, murmuring, “Oh, Blue, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The gentle attention only served to break down the last of Tuesday’s tenuous hold on composure, and the vault dweller—widow—childless mother—dissolved into Piper’s arms in a fit of sobs.

The reporter held her firmly, running soothing hands up and down her back, paying no attention to the damp spot growing on her shoulder. She was a safe haven in the forbidding storm of Tuesday’s life and of the Commonwealth in general. She was rock-solid, dependable, accountable, and just about the only good thing Tuesday had found since getting chewed up and spit out into the hollow shell of her old, familiar world. Tuesday leaned into her, trying to soak up the feeling of _steadiness_ that Piper always seemed to exude, and Piper tightened her tender grip.

Then, at a break in Tuesday’s tears, the reporter pulled back just enough to slide her cap off and press her forehead to the other woman’s. Her hands relocated to the vault dweller’s cheeks, and she ran scuffed thumbs over Tuesday’s cheekbones. “You know, Blue,” she said, sounding like she was fighting off a waver in her own voice, “if you can’t find any other reason to go on, do it for me.” Tuesday’s hands came up and seized Piper’s wrists in a sudden surge of emotion, but the vault dweller didn’t interrupt as Piper went on: “If the Commonwealth isn’t enough; if the Minutemen or the Railroad or whoever the hell else wants your help isn’t enough, be strong for me. Because I—I love you for _you,_ and I’m not going anywhere.”

The breath came out of Tuesday in a shudder. She fell forward to give Piper a tender, grateful, _meaningful_ kiss to express all the things she couldn't say before slumping back into her unwavering embrace.

And, it hurt like hell right now—hell, it hurt _worse_ than hell right now—but here in Piper’s arms on a roof that overlooked the world, Tuesday could see a glimmer of hope on the horizon. A passing glimpse of the certainty that she _could_ go on without Shaun, her driving purpose for as long as she’d walked this bomb-scorched earth. She _could_ find strength in other things: a cause, a mission, a person. Piper.

She could rise from the ashes of all that was left of her old life and focus her eyes on a new one. Better yet, she could fight for it, and if that’s what it took to scare away the demons of her past, then she would fight all the harder for it.

She was a survivor, and she was going to do just that.

…

It was in Cambridge Church waiting for Old Man Stockton and the synth refugee that Tuesday realized something unexpected of her companion. While they waited, lounging in the bluish moonlight, alert for any sign of their contact, Piper sat in one of the dusty old pews and…prayed.

Tuesday watched her silently for a while, feeling an odd blend of fondness and sorrow and resignation fill her chest as Piper’s lips moved soundlessly in the dark.

It was simple curiosity that prompted her to move after almost an hour of silence. Carefully, so as not to startle her companion, Tuesday rounded the pew and knelt down in front of her. “Who are you praying to?” she asked quietly, careful to keep any hint of judgment out of her tone.

Piper lowered her clasped hands to bring her face into view. When she regarded the vault dweller, there was somehow a mixture of hope and hopelessness in her eyes at once. And…the sheen of tears? “I don’t know,” she admitted softly. For some reason it felt appropriate to whisper here, even though certainly God’s presence had been bombed out of this place a long time ago. “God, if he’s still listening. And if he’s not…” Piper lifted one shoulder in a shrug and dropped her eyes. “…then someone who is.”

Tuesday, though she disagreed with her sentiment, couldn’t blame her. Once, the vault dweller herself had been a woman of faith. Before the bombs. Before the cryo-pods. Before Kellogg, and Shaun, and what the Commonwealth had become, and all the death and destruction and despair that was a simple fact of her life now. She’d once believed in God, but she figured he must be long gone now. There was no way for faith to survive alongside the horror of this existence.

And yet, Tuesday understood Piper’s desire for hope; for truth in the belief that there was an all-powerful good and that it would win, somehow. It was something to hold onto. It was something to fight for. It was something to live for.

So, if just to preserve that hope, she didn’t say anything contrary. She simply reached out and laid a hand on Piper’s knee and squeezed.

And murmured, “Send up one for me, too, then.”

…


	12. Chapter 12

With the Institute likely looking for a way to get their revenge on her for Bunker Hill, Tuesday decided it was high time to start digging some trenches.

Among other things, that meant retaking Fort Independence for the Minutemen. She stood there now with Preston, Piper, and an assortment of volunteers, raking her eyes over the crumbled wall of the Castle and the courtyard beyond, trying to gauge how many enemies lay within without being able to _see_ them. Mirelurks all looked about like rocks when they were hidden in their shells, and the place was absolutely full of rock-shaped silhouettes. They could be walking into a nest of ten or a hundred for all she knew.

“What should we do, General?” Preston prompted her for a decision, having just laid out their options for a plan of attack. If Tuesday was being honest, none of them sounded all that appealing.

She looked around at their little ragtag group, mentally taking inventory. They each carried a laser weapon with a few extra magazines of fusion cells on hand. Their armor was thin where they wore any at all, and the looks on their faces spoke to their poorly-hidden fear. They really _weren’t_ ready to do this, but they probably never would be.

The vault dweller sighed through her nose. She had the superior firepower among them as well as better defense in the form of her power armor. The simple fact was, general or not, she was the one best equipped to risk herself out there. “Set up a firing line and I’ll draw them out,” she decided grimly. A few pairs of shoulders drooped in relief, but one listener was the exact opposite of pleased.

“You can’t do this alone,” Piper spoke up sharply from behind Tuesday’s shoulder. When the vault dweller turned, the shorter girl fixed her with unwavering hazel eyes and lifted her chin. “I’m coming with you.”

She might have had the Minutemen fooled, but Tuesday had been in enough firefights with Piper to know when she was nervous about a confrontation. Now, the way her jaw muscle twitched; the way her fingers were wrapped tight around the grip of her pistol, she was definitely over the line into _afraid._

But Tuesday had expected nothing less, so she gave her companion a wan smile and replied, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

…

They very nearly died taking back the Castle from the mirelurk swarm—since when did they come in _building_ size?—but it was worth it. Piper hadn’t felt this breed of safe since…well, since her father was around, probably. The combination of the thick, if crumbled, castle walls and the warm reassurance of Blue by her side gave her an unparalleled sense of peace. The atmosphere helped, too. The doorway down the hall, the one that led to the courtyard, was dark under the midnight sky. A breeze wafted through the opening to make the corridor just cool enough to warrant a blanket. Piper and Blue shared one right now as they lay side by side on the newly refurbished mattress against the wall.

The vault dweller was dozing, recovering her strength after the ridiculous confrontation with the Mirelurk Queen, but Piper wasn’t interested in joining her in oblivion just yet. It was rare to feel safe in the Commonwealth, much less _peaceful,_ so Piper was going to savor this as long as she possibly could.

Plus, it didn’t hurt to have the chance to bask in Blue’s company and possibly admire her chiseled face and developing muscles while she wasn’t looking. That wasn’t weird, right? Piper supposed it didn’t matter if Blue never knew. 

She was doing it just now, anyway, facing her companion with her head pillowed on one arm and her eyes heavy-lidded as she simply drank in the sight. She didn’t know how Blue had ever dared call herself ugly, back when they’d first cleared Vault 88. The woman was positively statuesque; all high cheekbones and dark brows and lovely (kissable) lips. Her cheeks were pink and scarred, like she’d said, but that only made Piper like them more. Blue was unique; many-layered, and her appearance only echoed that.

Piper’s roving eyes next caught on a flaw that she knew must come from this newest chapter of Blue’s life: a pale mark cut into the bottom of her chin, not brand new but obviously not totally healed. Piper had noticed it before, in passing, but never had the opportunity to fixate on it as she did now. She couldn’t resist reaching out to run her finger over it gently, feeling like the contact was somehow a shared secret; like uncovering something about Blue that only she had the privilege to know.

It also had the unintended side effect of startling the vault dweller out of her doze with a jolt.

“Oh.” Piper pulled her hand back quickly and grimaced to herself. Trust the nosy reporter to screw up the littlest thing. “Sorry, Blue.”

The vault dweller let out a sleepy grumble and furrowed her brow, but the expression looked more confused than irritated. Hazy eyes flicked around the room, clearing only when they landed on Piper, like it had taken Blue a moment to remember where she was. Relaxing, she shifted so she could curl an arm around the reporter’s shoulders. “What are you still doing up?” she murmured, and it came out scratchy.

Piper felt her cheeks warm and shrugged off the question, feeling like _watching you sleep_ probably wouldn’t be the ideal answer. Instead she returned her finger to the scar on Blue’s chin and brushed it softly over the pale pink ridge. “What is this from?”

Blue smiled just a little. Piper thought she looked good like this, calm and comfortable in the darkness. “Deathclaw,” she provided offhandedly.

Piper’s brows shot up. Then she thought about that possibility for a moment, failed to connect the dots in a way that made sense, and gave Blue a skeptical narrow of her eyes. “Looks a little…dainty for a Deathclaw swipe, Blue,” she pointed out.

The vault dweller shook her head. “The claws aren’t what got me. When I was in Concord, right after I first met Preston, a Deathclaw attacked. I was fighting it alone. It did that whole…’pick you up and slam you back on the ground’ thing. Knocked my face right into the edge of my power armor.”

Piper propped herself up on her elbow in excitement. “Damn, Blue, that’s badass! Why isn’t this a story you tell everyone?” she wondered. Her mind was racing; lifting the most riveting details from the story to compile into something she could report later. She could see it now: _Woman Out of Time Snubs Death (and its Claws)._ Or something. It was a work in progress.

“You think anyone would believe it?” Blue gave her a knowing smile. _She_ hadn’t believed it, after all.

That didn’t stop Piper. “Want to find out? I’ve got a whole list of articles I’m planning to write about you, Ms. Woman Out of Time.” She bit her lip to hold back a smile.

Blue grunted a negative that was almost a chuckle. “I’m flattered. But no.” She tilted her head to give Piper a kiss on the brow, and that _still_ sent electricity shooting through the reporter’s frame. “It can be our secret.”

“Mmh.” Piper couldn’t think straight enough to string together much more than that, now that she had Blue’s lips on her mind. So she gave up, for now, and leaned down to claim a kiss somewhere a little more satisfying. Blue gladly conceded, and the night shielded them from all else like a blanket.

Piper could get used to a place like this.

… 

Alas, they had to leave behind the safety of the Castle eventually. When they did, they headed west. Tuesday intended to investigate the broadcast she’d heard from Nuka-World, all the way across the Commonwealth, but she was wary enough not to hurry too much. She decided on a path that would take them past several new settlements so she could check on their progress while they were passing through.

Tonight, they’d made it to Country Crossing, and, after pitching in with the evening’s farm work, retired to the cookfire at the corner of the house Tuesday had coordinated an effort to build some weeks ago. The vault dweller sat on the pile of spare cinderblocks at the edge of the glow; Piper on the ground with her back to the cornfield. They were finishing off the remains of a tough radstag steak they’d shared for dinner, and though it probably did more harm than good to her digestive system, Tuesday was feeling oddly content. She was full, the settlement was safe, Piper was likewise, and the air wasn’t even overly freezing right now. She leaned back against the blocks behind her, letting out a sigh that accompanied the release of tension from her shoulders. For a time that could have lasted forever or mere seconds for all Tuesday knew, the vault dweller relaxed in the mostly-silence, letting herself simply absorb the rare lull in the violence of this new world.

It was Piper who broke it first. “Hey, Blue?” she spoke up suddenly, nervously, as if she’d been mulling it over for a while. Tuesday let her gaze drift over to meet Piper’s: gray to warm hazel. Right now, it looked gold in the firelight. “What are you planning to do? When all of this is over, I mean,” she asked, not quite managing to sound offhand.

Tuesday’s mind immediately shifted into high gear to try and gather what her partner was really asking. It was unnerving, almost, that she had learned how to do so over these past several months, but right now, she couldn’t quite nail down the problem. She settled for leveling a solemn look at the reporter from beneath heavy lids. “Do you think it will ever really be over?” she asked.

The younger woman shifted in her seat and shrugged uncomfortably enough that Tuesday felt a little bad. “Well, I mean…it has to at least get _better_ , doesn’t it?” Her expression said that she wanted; _needed_ to believe that.

But Tuesday couldn’t quite bring herself to buy into the lie. “I admire your optimism, Piper,” she said hollowly.

“Come on, Blue,” Piper sighed. “Hypothetically, then.”

She was getting nearer to the root of Piper’s concern; she could feel it. The knowledge was like a stream of ice trickling into her veins through an IV. “In the case that we really do rally the Railroad and Minutemen in large enough numbers to defeat the Institute, make it back out alive, and stabilize the Commonwealth as a whole before my two hundred years as a popsicle catch up with me, I guess I’d probably settle back down in Sanctuary Hills,” she answered, making no attempt to hide the doubt in her voice.

Piper’s eyes looked sad, but she managed a snort. “You, settling down? That’ll be a sight to behold.” When Tuesday didn’t immediately respond, the reporter dropped her voice lower, softer. “Will you be…okay there?” She tightened her arms around her bent knees. “You know; memories and all.”

Tuesday sighed and her shoulders slumped. “It’s been okay so far, but then again, I’ve had plenty on my mind to distract me. I just hope it stays that way.”

“Me too, Blue.” Piper lowered her eyes and swallowed with visible effort. “But, uh…if you change your mind, just know there’s always a place for you in Diamond City.”

It took a full second for Tuesday to realize what she was saying. She wasn’t prepared; couldn’t keep the blood from draining from her face in sick surprise. “You’ll be going back to Diamond City?” she asked hoarsely. But—that wasn’t right. They were…together, right? Shouldn’t that mean that they would _stay_ together? Was that not what Piper wanted? 

“The paper ain’t going to run itself,” the reporter reminded, regarding Tuesday a little oddly, like she had said something silly.

And Tuesday supposed she had. “No, I know that,” she rushed to cover her disappointment. “I just—I thought—” _Stupid. Fucking stupid. “_ You know, I don’t know what I thought. Never mind.”

Piper’s brows furrowed at her obvious distress. Apparently it was her turn to try to read into Tuesday’s insecurities. Funny how they were better at that sort of communication than actually _talking,_ apparently. “No, Blue, what is it?” she questioned, leaning forward in her seat to demonstrate her full attention.

Tuesday couldn’t hold out long beneath that firelit gaze. She swallowed back the bile that threatened to choke her as emotions warred within her. “I thought, um…” She licked dry lips. “I thought you might stay with me. I guess.” She dropped her eyes, afraid of what she would find on Piper’s face if she were to look. “It was a stupid idea. I wasn’t thinking about the paper.” 

“You want me to stay with you? Even after all this is over?” The raw shock in the other girl’s voice made Tuesday’s head snap back up.

“Of course I do,” she responded instantly, earnestly, even as her brows furrowed in confusion. She didn’t grasp why Piper seemed so surprised. She thought they’d addressed this, back when they first…well, confessed. She would _always_ want Piper with her.

Piper let out an audible breath as if she’d been punched. For a moment, the only sound between them was the crackling of the cookfire, and they regarded each other across it like they were seeing one another for the first time. Like they’d both just realized something important. Tuesday supposed they had.

Eventually, Piper let a slow grin spread over her face. “Y-yeah, I guess—I guess you do,” she breathed. Then her smile was tempered by a blush and a drop of her eyes. “I—I don’t mean to doubt you, Blue. I just—I figured relationships established in a hail of gunfire rarely work out. I thought we might, you know…” She shrugged shyly. “part ways after this.”

Tuesday’s uncertain emotions suddenly sharpened into intense clarity. Almost without thinking, she propelled herself off her perch to circle the fire to where Piper sat. There she dropped to her knees in front of her partner to bring their eyes close, level. Piper met her gaze with wide eyes, startled by the abrupt change, but she didn’t flinch when the vault dweller reached out and took her chin in one hand.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Tuesday said lowly, roughly. She had to make Piper understand. “This—” She leaned in quick and gave the papergirl a firm kiss on the lips, earning a gasp of surprise. “This isn’t going anywhere.” She pulled back an inch and when she looked at Piper she could feel the fire in her own eyes. “I want you with me as long as you want to be here.”

A breathless pause stretched like a tightrope between them, daring one or the other to cross it. Piper’s chin was still cradled in Tuesday’s hand. The reporter was searching her face with something like longing—as if wanting, _willing_ her words to be true—and when she found only conviction in the sharp backlit planes, she surged forward to bring their lips together again.

Tuesday caught her around the waist and kissed her back just as desperately, the contact a physical confirmation of her promise.

…


	13. Chapter 13

The Nuka-World radio transmission had been creepy, to say the least. It wasn’t just the artificial cheeriness of the advertiser’s spiel, nor the uneasy nostalgia that the thought of the amusement park stirred in her. No, the worst part was that the transmission should not have been broadcast at all. The fact that any word was coming out of the amusement park in this day and age meant that someone was there, and someone was trying to make contact. Why, Tuesday didn’t know. Her best guess was that it was an attempt at a distress call of some sort, which was why she and Piper were on the way to investigate now, but the truth was she had no idea what they were walking into.

She brought a suit of power armor and a healthy stock of ammo, just in case.

Both turned out to come in way more handy than she would have liked.

“Why are there Gunners here?” Tuesday was currently gasping to her partner as they crouched behind a defunct automobile at the entrance to the Nuka-World transit station.

“No good reason,” Piper returned through gritted teeth as she rose up just enough to fire a pair of shots over the hood. She dropped back down just in time to avoid the bullet that went ricocheting off the metal in response. She let out a shaky huff and slid wide eyes to Tuesday. “You sure you want to go through with this?”

Tuesday’s brow tightened in frustration. “Of course I don’t,” she grated, popping up to cover Piper as she caught her breath, “but we have to. Someone might be in trouble.”

That was her answer to most things these days. She hadn’t been able to save her own family, so she was desperately trying to fill the void by saving other people instead. She was fully aware of the futility of it; aware that she’d never find peace after everything she’d been through, but what choice did she have? She was here, now, in the bombed-out radioactive future that had previously only existed in her nightmares, and there was no going back. There was no way out except death, and there was nothing to live for except other people. Saving them—or loving them, occasionally. She glanced down at Piper, who half-lay against the wheel well beside her knee, tensely but expertly reloading her pistol. Her heart softened just a little.

“Your funeral,” the reporter grumbled into her collar, but Tuesday knew she wasn’t really upset. At least—not that the vault dweller was bent on going to offer aid to whomever might need it. More that it was necessary to risk her neck in the attempt. They’d had plenty of conversations about it before now.

Refocusing on the firefight, the two women peered over the hood of the car to gain a sightline on their opponents. Two left. Piece of cake (if cake was made of blood and violence and left a bitter taste in her mouth, even after all this time).

She and Piper exchanged a glance before raising their guns and making a quick end to the conflict. It was easy, logistically, when they had solid cover and the Gunners were backlit by the haunting glow of the Nuka-World sign. Internally was another story. The sigh that Tuesday released upon gunning down the last enemy was not wholly of relief.

“Let’s get in there and see what all the fuss is about,” she grumbled as she led the way out of cover and toward the eerie transit station. Piper’s footsteps against the pavement behind her were a comfort in the dim.

Inside the station was much more like what Tuesday had expected. On the ground beside the tram itself was a man hunched over a bloody-looking wound. The vault dweller relaxed a fraction— _he must be the one who sent out the transmission as a distress call—_ until she realized that she received the call days ago and this man couldn’t possibly have lasted that long if he were in as dire a state as he claimed.

“My family,” he kept stressing, even after Tuesday offered to heal him with a stimpak. “My family is in danger. Save them first. The raiders have them.”

“Right,” Piper affirmed in a tone of uncharacteristic hesitance. She must have been picking up on his sketchy vibes as well, because she gave Tuesday a glance that said as clearly as if she’d spoken aloud, _what do we do?_

Tuesday grit her teeth. She knew what they _should_ do: turn right back around and get out of here while they still could, because Harvey’s story was thin enough to see through and she didn’t like what she glimpsed on the other side. 

But she also knew what she was _going_ to do: board that stupid tram to Nuka-World and gird her loins for a fight with a shitload of raiders, because if there was so much as a sliver of a chance that some poor soul’s wife and son really _were_ in danger at the other end of that line, it was her job to save them. After all, no one else was going to.

So she sighed heavily and nodded to her partner, who hefted her gun in understanding.

Then she aimed a withering look at Harvey and dropped the stimpak she’d offered beside him, just in case he really did need it. And, “Don’t make me regret this,” she said lowly as they headed for the tram.

Harvey visibly gulped.

…

To nobody’s surprise, what Tuesday and Piper found at the end of the line was not, in fact, Harvey’s endangered family.

Tuesday would have said she’d expected this, except she didn’t think she could have dreamed up what they actually found in her wildest nightmares.

“What the _fuck_ is this place?” Piper demanded, not for the first time, as she and her partner dropped back against a sheltered wall to avoid the blast of yet another frag mine that had nearly taken their legs off.

Tuesday breathed hard and deep through her nose, trying to calm the mix of fear and scathing anger that wanted to boil up inside her. She was _so_ annoyed. Why was the world hell-bent on screwing over everyone who wanted to do good? Why was her life just one cosmic _fuck you_ after the other? What had she ever done to deserve this sort of punishment?

It was a little better with Piper beside her, but at the same time it was worse. It just left Tuesday wondering how long they had together before one of them met a violent, inevitable fate and left the other in a pile of shattered pieces, like everything else in the Commonwealth. The vault dweller tilted her head back against the wall and groaned.

“Blue? Are you hurt?” Piper shot upright immediately, and Tuesday gently waved her off.

“Only on the inside,” she grumbled, and it wasn’t really a joke. Piper’s mouth flattened into a crooked line, but she didn’t press. Tuesday was up and moving before she had the chance to.

“Be careful,” her companion called softly after her, more as a statement of concern than any real advice; obviously they had to be careful. Tuesday was again guiltily glad that she was here.

She was not, however, careful enough.

She went through the open security gate ahead without Piper, intending to check out the conspicuous terminal on the other side of the room, and she figured it was a trap but hadn’t predicted just what kind. Her heart dropped into her toes when the gate slammed shut on her heels.

 _What new devilry is this?_ she hardly had time to wonder bitterly before a hissing sound split the air and her hair ruffled in a sudden breeze from above.

_Shit._

_Gas_.

Even as she realized it, the toxin hit her lungs and she broke out in a coughing fit as her vision blurred at the edges almost immediately. She turned quickly to go back the way she’d come, only to find that the security gate was locked tight and no keyhole gave her an easy means to change that—and Piper was stuck on the other side. Tuesday pressed an armored hand to the grated window, at once relieved and panicked that she was separated from her companion; relieved because Piper was not also sucking in lungfuls of toxic gas, but panicked because that meant Tuesday had to solve this all on her own—and _fast._

“Blue!” Piper’s shout was muffled to her suffering senses and faded further as Tuesday stumbled away from the door, head on a rusty swivel in search of something that might spare her an anticlimactic death by asphyxiation. “Blue, find a valve! Shut it off!”

 _A valve._ There had to be a valve around here somewhere. Tuesday followed the sound of airy hissing around the corner to her left and laid eyes on it with a twinge of relief. When she stepped toward it, her knee nearly gave out beneath her, and she had to try again in order to get herself moving forward. Piper was still yelling someplace behind her, growing more desperate and yet more distant as Tuesday gagged and swayed in the cloud of gas.

She pushed onward toward the valve.

Before she could reach it, two radroaches, both huge and glowing, erupted from the ground below as if they’d simply been waiting to ambush her. They had, probably, with her luck.

Tuesday acted on instinct, treating the roaches like any other she’d faced before: with a dose of lead to the thorax. Only, she forgot that she hadn’t faced all those other roaches in an enclosed room filled with flammable poison gas.

Her first shot sent the room roaring into flame.

“ _Blue!_ ”

_Shit._

Tuesday threw up her hands to cover her face. 

Her power armor was the only thing between her and a quick end as a blackened stump. Even then she could feel every inch of exposed skin scorch in the heat and the breath sucked right from her lungs. _Good thing Piper isn’t in here,_ she was coherent enough to think.

The only bright side to the inferno, as it were, was that it knocked the radroaches out of commission, for which Tuesday was thankful. Unfortunately, it did not stop the flow of gas from wherever it was emanating from, which meant she was still slipping by the second. She had to hurry. 

As the last of the flames choked themselves out, the vault dweller stumbled into a crouch before the locked terminal against the wall, squinting through blurring eyes at the codes that dotted the screen. When her senses proved too far gone, she rifled frantically for a stimpak from her bag and plunged it into her leg through a chink in her armor, praying it would fight the effects of the gas.

Her eyes and mind cleared just enough for her to recognize the pattern, and she selected the right password to an approving _beep_ from the terminal, and the hiss of gas cut off. A few clicks more had the security doors open, and Piper rushed in at the same time the gas rushed out.

“Blue!” her partner’s voice split the air again, seeming loud enough to ring in her ears. In a second Piper was at her side, supporting her as she knelt on the floor to catch her breath. “Are you alright? Jesus, this place is fucked up!” Tawny hands cupped her face in a search for damage and Tuesday winced as they contacted the light burns there. The stimpak she’d shot up was working on those as well as her addled senses, but not fast enough to be comfortable.

“I will be as soon as we get out of here,” she grunted out through the pain. She gripped the terminal’s keyboard with one hand and Piper’s shoulder with the other and levered herself shakily to her feet.

Piper let out a sharp breath like she’d been holding it. It was close to relief, but didn’t quite manage it. “Right,” she affirmed, steadying Tuesday as she rose. Her warmth physically hurt in the wake of the fire, but the vault dweller wouldn’t have forgone it for anything. “Hopefully we’re almost there.”

…

They were not almost there.

On the contrary, it turned out that the worst was yet to come.

The asshole at the end of the Gauntlet was apparently just there to remind her that she was not, in fact, home free quite yet. Instead she was supposed to participate in some harebrained deathmatch for some bloody title she wouldn’t have wanted if her life depended on it (and it did). And what did he give her to defend herself?

A water pistol.

A fucking children’s toy.

When he handed it to her, she stared at him for a long moment, seething, weighing the possible consequences of shooting him in the face right that instant—with a _real_ pistol.

“I made it through your fucking Gauntlet. Can’t we just go home?” she growled out between grinding teeth.

“‘Fraid not,” was the man’s gruff, _infuriating_ response. “It’s either your life on the line or mine, and I like mine too much to risk it.”

Piper’s hand on Tuesday’s wrist brought her to the realization that she’d been gripping the gun at her belt. The simple motion may have saved Gage’s life. She peeled her fingers away from the grip with effort and forced herself to take a deep breath. It took all her self-control to resist letting it out in a roar of rage. Out of all the stupid, twisted fuck-you situations the Commonwealth had thrown at her so far, this was by far the worst. This time, the punishment for trying to do right was cruel, deliberate, and extreme, and there was no way out. It was like the universe was trying to condition her into the sort of heartless asshat everyone else on this bloody rock seemed to be, and she was _this close_ to snapping and doing just that.

But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. For Piper’s sake, and for the Minutemen’s sake, and for the innocents’ sake.

So she took the bloody water pistol and turned away from Gage with a look hard enough to rival stone and began trying to prepare herself for the fight that might turn her world on its head for a second time.

She was once again stilled by a hand on her wrist, and when Tuesday turned she was met by wide, wet hazel eyes. She’d never seen a look quite like this on Piper’s face: sheet-white and absolutely terrified. “I’m so scared, Blue,” the reporter rasped, low enough that Gage wouldn’t hear.

 _So am I,_ Tuesday was thinking, but she put on a brave face for Piper, even as the resolve within her withered. It probably looked as much a flimsy mask as it felt. “We’ve faced worse,” she pointed out. Which…objectively, was probably true, but this situation was so starkly _different_ from anything they’d faced before that she had no idea what to expect, and that made it all the more terrifying. 

Piper echoed her thoughts with a grim set to her lips. “Something makes me think it’s different this time.” She stepped close to Tuesday so only she could hear her next words, whispered in bare pleading: “Please come back. Please.”

Tuesday leaned down to bring their lips close before she knew what she was doing; before she remembered that they were in a nest of enemies who might regard their relationship as a vulnerability. But Gage was the only one around, and Tuesday spared him only a quick cursory glance before deciding that she didn’t care what he thought and leaning in to kiss Piper hard.

She let that speak as her promise. She couldn’t quite bring herself to voice the lie outright. 

They broke away reluctantly; breathlessly. Tuesday ran a gentle hand over the side of her partner’s face, and Piper leaned into it, frantically blinking back tears. There was a chill in the air when they pulled apart. It remained as Tuesday turned and stepped into the deathtrap that was Colter’s ring.

...

Colter was tough, but he was slow, and Tuesday had her preferred advantage of space to maneuver (read: hide). It took an obscenely long time, and she didn’t escape unscathed, but in the end Tuesday took down the Overboss. Against all odds, the bloody Thirst Zapper did its job and let her gun him down while his suit was shorted out. It was her sledgehammer that did the final deed, though, in the interest of giving the audience a show so maybe they wouldn’t kill her after. She wasn’t sure if the shocked gasps and hesitant cheering were a good sign or bad.

She couldn’t dredge up the energy to care just then. For one thing, her limbs felt weighed down with lead—which wasn’t far from the truth, considering she was now dragging the broken plates of her power armor along with her in the wake of the fight—and secondly, she had more important things to pay attention to. Namely, the red-coated figure rushing out onto the arena floor like a racer out of the gate as soon as the security door allowed it.

As she approached fast enough to cause Tuesday concern, her voice carried across the open space. “Oh my God, you’re okay,” she half-sobbed, for the vault dweller’s ears only. Once within range she flung herself into her partner’s arms and pressed them close together, uncaring of the stands full of raiders watching. Tuesday supported her by her hips with a touch as careful as the ungainly armor would allow. The awkward hug felt like a huge sigh of relief for both of them.

When Piper pulled back and settled on her feet again, the snarl on her face became clearly visible. “I hate this place already,” she hissed into the safety of the space between them. “These worthless shits seem dead set on making me watch from the sidelines while you risk your neck.”

Tuesday grunted in regretful agreement and swiveled her head to look back at Colter’s fallen form. She wasn’t truly that hopeful, but she said anyway, “Hopefully this means they’ll let us go.”

Almost as if on cue, Porter Gage stuck his head out from the doorway at the exit to the arena. His triumphant cry of, “Looks like we’ve got a new Overboss!” sent all of Tuesday’s fragile hopes crashing into the abyss. She couldn’t manage a sigh deep enough to express the giant hole emptying out her chest cavity. They were most definitely _not_ home free. She doubted that she’d ever been so far from free in her life—notwithstanding the icebox, of course.

Piper’s hand curling anxiously around her own was the only thing keeping her grounded enough to avoid either a panic attack or a wild murder rampage. Or maybe both. Her voice, however, was not so steadying. “What the hell have you walked into here, Blue?” she managed weakly beneath the din of the now-roaring crowd.

It was a long moment before Tuesday gathered herself enough to turn lost, empty eyes on her partner and admit, “I have no idea.”

…


	14. Chapter 14

Meeting with Gage on the top deck of the Fizztop Grille and hearing him explain the situation made Tuesday feel infinitely worse. Not that it was a surprise. 

They couldn’t leave. They were stuck here, she was stuck as the new leader of a bunch of bloodthirsty pricks, and it was all her fault. If she had just listened to her instincts after speaking with Harvey, they wouldn’t be in this mess. If she had just let go of her rabid desperation to do something _good,_ do something _right_ no matter what, she might have actually been able to see what _was_ truly right. 

It wasn’t this.

She knew it was useless to argue, but she gave it a shot anyway: “Sorry, pal. I don’t want the job,” she told Gage in a tone like ice. She felt Piper press an approving hand against the small of her back and took a small comfort in knowing that she was at least doing right by _someone_. It was quickly overshadowed by the agonizing realization that her massive slip-up was going to make her partner suffer, too. 

Gage scoffed like maybe he thought she was joking. “It ain’t that easy, boss. These guys are already half a piss from tearing each other’s throats out. You try and leave now, that ain't gonna go over so well.”

Tuesday once again had to clench her fists and take a deep breath to keep her hand off her pistol. She was wondering if Gage would look any less ugly with a hole through his face. Probably not.

Piper’s hand slid smoothly up her spine, drawing attention to the painful tension that had amassed between her shoulder blades, coaxing her to release it. And Tuesday tried to, with some effort, but couldn’t quite manage to shake the heavy guilt weighing down her muscles. On a defeated sigh she managed to say somewhat levelly, “Great. Thanks for the advice. You can go now.”

Gage grumbled something as he left, which Tuesday intentionally ignored before shutting and locking the door firmly behind him. As soon as she and Piper were alone, Tuesday felt her walls come crumbling down. She wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt at holding herself together, but her words still came out in a shudder when she blurted, “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this, Piper.” She could feel her expression crumpling in a reflection of her pain. This was too fucking much. “I thought we were just going to save some guy’s family, not—not sign on to lead a bunch of thieves and murderers.”

Piper stepped in close to cradle her cheeks in both hands. Her touch was warm, soothing, and only served to make Tuesday feel guiltier. “You did what you thought was right,” the reporter comforted, stroking along her cheekbones. “Same as always.”

“But it _wasn’t_ this time,” Tuesday lamented, pulling away with eyes squeezed shut against her partner’s condolences. She didn’t deserve them. “Piper, we’re stuck here. _You’re_ stuck here,” she pointed out miserably. “What about Nat? What about the settlements? What about the Minutemen? The Institute?” She could feel herself growing more desperate; more frantic by the second as visions of a deadly future—a future _she_ caused—swam behind her eyelids. “Who’s going to protect the Commonwealth while we’re tied up here?”

Piper followed her retreat. Tuesday could tell she was worried too, but she kept her voice calm, reasonable. “The Minutemen are strong enough to handle themselves for a little while. And so—“ Here her certainty cracked a bit. “So is Nat.” She recovered with a thin, forced smile. “We’ll just have to figure this shit out as fast as possible and then be on our way, huh?” 

Tuesday let her shoulders slump in a sigh. She knew she was being weak; being silly, but she was just so, so _tired_ of the shit the world kept throwing at her. This was the worst scenario they’d faced yet. She was the unwilling new head of a hellhole whose very existence was the bane of all she stood for. If she tried to leave, she’d die. Was it a surprise to anyone that she was losing her grip a little bit? “I have a feeling it won’t be that easy,” she replied in a hoarse attempt at something close to humor.

Piper sighed too and reached up to run a gentle, reflective hand through Tuesday’s dark hair. “I hate to say it, but your gut’s usually right, Blue.”

The vault dweller leaned absently into the attention. For a moment she let her eyes slip closed and her thoughts settle, her world narrowing to nothing but her steady breathing and Piper’s soothing hand. “I’m glad you’re with me,” she murmured before she was aware of the words. Then she stiffened, eyes snapping open again. “Not that I’m glad you’re stuck here, just—“

Piper cut her off with a finger against her lips and a gentle kiss on her cheek. “Me too, Blue,” she hardly more than whispered into the vault dweller’s ear.

And, as much as Tuesday wished that things were different, she supposed this was only inevitable. Piper had said, after all, that she’d brave hell with Tuesday without her even having to ask.

They both just figured it wouldn’t actually happen so soon. 

… 

After foraying a little ways into the Galactic Zone and Kiddie Kingdom and then foraying quickly back out, Tuesday decided firmly, “We are getting the hell out of here.”

She had _not_ signed up for any of this. The more time she spent in this nightmare park, the more fresh horrors made themselves known to her. The Galactic Zone was full of dead traders and live robots who could melt the skin off her bones (why the _fuck_ was the park full of laser turrets?), and Kiddie Kingdom was overrun with weirdly hued feral ghouls and irradiated gas. Part of her wondered what the other sections of the part could possibly hold, but a larger part was vehemently opposed to finding out.

If the point of her mission had been to clear the land for some well-meaning settlers, or to save some hostages from the clutches of some nasty beasts, she would have powered through. But doing it for the sake of some bloody raiders? Overboss or not, she hated every uncollared person in this park, and she would be glad to see them tear each other to pieces over some measly strip of territory.

That’s why she was seated in one of the booths by the Fizztop Grille picture window instead of out there risking her ass again, mulling over the conversation she’d had with a trader earlier that day.

 _You could…get rid of the raiders,_ the woman—Mackenzie, maybe?—had said, very low and very timid in case one of the passing wretches themselves overheard.

 _I’d have to kill all of them?_ Tuesday had responded in surprise, not at the suggestion itself but at the enormity of the task. The park was crawling with raiders from every faction, and quarters were close enough that she’d have no chance to gun them all down before getting slaughtered herself.

 _No, of course not,_ Mackenzie had assured, giving Tuesday a flash of relief before continuing: _Just the leaders of the gangs._

Right. Naturally. Just the leaders, who had the support of all of their respective factions at their backs. As soon as she shot one of them, she’d have them all to reckon with. This trader’s idea was solid on paper, but in practice, Tuesday knew better. It was a suicide mission. She’d ended the conversation without indicating whether she was willing to try it or not, but the prospect had been on her mind for the entire rest of the day.

Clearing Nuka-World of raiders was the right thing to do, objectively. As a Minuteman, she was obligated to protect the honest people of the Commonwealth and wipe out any threats to their safety. Knowing just how difficult reaching that goal would be, though, Tuesday was tempted to just hop back on the monorail and leave this place in the dust. The raiders would all kill each other eventually, and the traders would be home free without her having to intervene. Right?

If they didn’t get so antsy that they killed all the traders first just for the hell of it.

The truth was, she was going to have to take out these lowlifes whether she liked her odds or not.

So, she decided, she’d just have to improve her odds.

“We’re going to go get Preston, and we’re going to come back and wipe these assholes off the face of the earth,” she said abruptly to her reflection.

“Blue?” prompted Piper gently from the seat across from her. “Remember the part where we can’t leave without getting a bullet in the back?”

“No.” Tuesday was so deep in her thoughts that she didn’t realize at first that she’d answered the wrong question. Then she shook her head lightly to clear it. “I mean, yes. But no, listen. The raiders know that we pulled out of the other sections of the park when it got too dangerous. They know I haven’t cleared them out yet, and they don’t seem too willing to help me do it themselves. So if I tell them I need to leave to bring back reinforcements…”

“They’ll let you go if they think it’s in their best interest,” Piper realized.

“Right. And it isn’t a lie, exactly, because I _will_ be going to get reinforcements,” Tuesday added, eyeing the reporter carefully to gauge her response.

Piper recognized what she was doing and reached across the table to grasp her hand earnestly. “Hey. I know I’m a big fan of the truth, but lying to a bunch of liars wouldn’t change my opinion of you. You know that, right?”

Tuesday gave her a little half-smile and turned her hand over so she could return Piper’s gesture. “Just wanted to be sure.” She let herself be distracted for a second by the brush of the reporter’s fingers over hers, savoring the only hint of tenderness she’d found in this place yet. Then, “I want you to stay behind. In the Commonwealth,” she tacked on in a rush, as if it would be easier that way.

But there was no way to make this easier. Piper removed her hand slowly, focusing intense hazel eyes on Tuesday's face as her words sank in. “Blue,” she began lowly, tightly. “We’ve talked about this.”

Tuesday curled her own hand into a fist, regretting the lost touch. Of course they’d talked about this, but that was back when the Institute was their only enemy. When Piper had just as much of a stake in the war as she. “This is different,” she sighed. “This is _my_ fault. _My_ fight.” She raised her eyes to meet those steady dark ones, but could only hold them for a moment. “You said yourself that you have to get back to Nat.”

“I said—” She’d said the opposite and Tuesday knew that, but—

“I know what you _meant._ ” Her heart squeezed as Piper deflated, and she ventured to reach for her hand again. The girl didn’t shake her off. “We both know you never should have gotten roped into this. This is your chance to get out.”

“What about _you?_ ” Piper returned rawly, brows furrowing. “If I stay behind and you come back here and get yourself killed, I—” She broke off and shook her head as her voice went too hoarse to speak.

“I always come back.”

“Blue, you can’t promise that,” the reporter argued in a miserable whisper. She raised her grip to Tuesday’s forearm and squeezed. “I know you can hold your own, but even you aren’t invincible.”

“I’ll have the Minutemen with me,” the vault dweller reminded gently, “and that hunk of junk over there.” She jerked her thumb at the suit of power armor standing at its station. “What’s the worst that could happen?” She could think of many awful things, but she was hoping her voice came across more confident than she felt.

Piper groaned and let her face drop into her free hand solidly. “Blue, you’re never, ever supposed to say that. It’s basically jinxing yourself.”

Tuesday let out a half-hearted snort before sobering again. “Listen, Piper,” she murmured, leaning across the table so she could meet her friend’s eyes intently. When the reporter looked up, the hazel of hers was misty. “You’re too valuable to knowingly dive headfirst into a literal hive of bloodthirsty raiders. Don’t—” She cut off the protest that she knew was coming when Piper inhaled. “Don’t argue with me. Please.” Tuesday looked down at the reporter’s hand still closed around her arm and took it in her own. She turned it over so she could follow the lines of Piper’s palm with her eyes, letting it sink in just how _human_ this young woman was. How alive. How fragile. She took an unsteady breath and let it out on the words she didn’t want to have to use: “If something happens to me, I want to know the Commonwealth is in good hands.”

“No,” was Piper’s immediate response, her voice tight and sharp. She pulled away and rose to her feet so abruptly that the booth protested against the floor behind her. “No. That’s what this is? You think you’re going to die so you want to get things in order? No.” She tried to swallow down the waver in her voice but could do nothing about the tears rising to her eyes. “Blue, you’d better fucking come back.”

Tuesday rose from her seat too and rounded the table so she could brace Piper’s shoulders with her hands. The reporter stiffened at the touch for a split second before dissolving into the vault dweller’s ready embrace, a hoarse sob escaping from her throat. Tuesday held her tightly, trying to communicate the _resolve_ she felt about this; to let it bolster Piper as it did her.

At the same time she knew it wouldn’t work. She knew what she was asking was unfair. She knew that if their positions were reversed and Piper was about to walk into a death trap for the sake of the greater good and _leave her behind—_

No. She knew it wasn’t fair, but it was necessary. There were dozens of innocent people here who needed rescuing, and the only way to do that was to neutralize the raiders. Tuesday was willing to sacrifice her own safety for that cause, but not Piper’s too. Defending the Castle from the Institute’s raid had been a close call that she never wanted to repeat. They could not both risk themselves when they were such a large part of the small force fighting for good in the Commonwealth. What she’d said was true: she wanted to be sure the Commonwealth was in good hands even if she and Preston failed. She didn’t need Piper to _like_ that; only to understand.

She gave her companion a kiss on the temple in a futile attempt at comfort. “I’ll do my best,” she soothed, tightening her hold on Piper as her shoulders shook. Her own heart was crumbling at the sight; Piper rarely cried, so when she did it was like a knife right to the chest. Her own words were rough as she finished, “but I want to be prepared for the worst.”

“Fuck you, Blue.” The words trembled as Piper spoke them into Tuesday’s shoulder, and the vault dweller had to agree.

…


	15. Chapter 15

Piper couldn’t exactly stop Blue when she set her mind to something, so the vault dweller recited her excuse to the raiders and back to the Commonwealth they went (with many a suspicious look from the resident raider leaders, but no bullets in their backs), and thus their time began running out. They hardly talked along the road back to Sanctuary except to call out to one another during firefights. Once there, Blue didn’t bring Piper to her discussion with Preston. She had to assume that the vault dweller was giving him private instructions; probably something along the lines of _get someone to keep Piper from following me, no matter what._ She wondered how hard that unlucky soul would really fight her if she tried. 

The anticipation; the dread made their time together in Sanctuary feel hollow and uncertain. Piper didn’t know exactly when her companion was planning to fuck off to get murdered, and Blue seemed to intentionally avoid telling her. The question just hung in the air like a suffocating blanket every time they were together, sucking the air out of the room so their words were few and the ones they did speak fell flat. It tore at Piper’s heart. She didn’t want things to be like this. If this was potentially the only remaining time she was going to get to spend with her vault dweller, she wanted it to _mean_ something, not feel like they’d just had some kind of breakup. She struggled to think of something—anything—to say that wasn’t _please don’t go_ or _you can’t make me stay here_ or _I can’t lose you_ or any number of things that she knew would only make things worse. 

In the end, she never got the chance.

They’d gone to bed together that night, as had become their norm, unresolved tension or not. Piper had tangled herself in Blue’s warmth and tried to communicate all the things she couldn’t (wouldn’t) say in the tightness of her answering hold. She might have cried a little bit into the front of Blue’s shirt, maybe. And the vault dweller might have feathered kisses upon her brow and her cheeks and her nose until she relaxed enough to slip into sleep, so tender even now, maybe. 

And when she woke up, Blue was gone.

Piper bolted upright with a gasp. It was still dark, but she could already tell that the mattress was empty beside her. She ran a frantic hand over it anyway, in case maybe it was still warm; maybe Blue had just gotten up to take a leak like she sometimes did. But it wasn’t. It held no sign that anyone had been there all night.

“No,” mumbled Piper through sleep-sluggish lips. “No, no, no, no.” She crawled across Blue’s side of the bed and fumbled in the dark for the steamer trunk beside it, where the vault dweller piled her stuff every night. Its surface, too, was empty. Except for—

Piper’s shaking fingers closed around a scrap of paper that had been tucked beneath one of the metal bands. A note. She clutched it so tight it crumpled as she cast around for some light to see by, heart racing in fear of what she would find. She could guess. She could predict, word for word, what Blue had written her as a futile goodbye; something heartfelt, dear, but not enough. Never enough.

She found her lighter in the inner pocket of her coat. Once acquired she flicked it to life, holding it up to the note so she could see what was on it. She almost didn’t want to look. Almost. But if this was going to be Blue’s final words to her, her heart gave her no choice. Her eyes locked on the carefully penned message:

 _Piper,_ it said, _I’m sorry. I didn’t want to leave like this, but I think I would have had to physically tie you down otherwise._ Piper let out something more sob than laugh at the truth in that. She was tearing up already, and it made the rest hard to read. She forced herself on. _I’ll be back soon. If I’m not, everything I have is yours. Take care of Nat. Take care of the Minutemen. Take care of the Commonwealth. I wouldn’t trust anyone with its future more than you._

“No. Blue,” Piper cried to the empty room. This was what she got for falling in love with someone in these dark days. Open up just a little bit, and the world would rip you apart. Let yourself be even the slightest bit vulnerable, and it would pulverize your heart on the spot. Piper felt like hers was in pieces. “Fuck you. Fuck you. Oh, shit, Blue, what are you doing?” she sobbed into her hand as if that might hold back the despair. 

But, of course, it didn’t. Piper was overwhelmed by the flood of grief that hit her like a nuclear blast. Blue wasn’t even dead yet, as far as she knew, and it felt like she was lost forever. The papergirl slipped off the edge of the bed and onto her knees on the floor, body weak against the prospect that she may have seen her precious vault dweller for the final time. “No,” she whimpered again, weakly. Eyes squeezed shut, she pressed her forehead to the floor like it might physically ground her somehow. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work, either.

She didn’t know how long she simply knelt on the floor and cried before she scraped together enough willpower to straighten up, uncrumple Blue’s note, and scan it again in the dim glow of the coming dawn. Her eyes lingered on the pretty little loops on the _y_ and _l_ that must have been an art lost to time; a skill unique to only her vault dweller. She held the paper to her chest like maybe she could pretend Blue’s touch was still on it. Still on her.

 _I love you,_ lay at the end of the message, written in a shakier hand than the rest, like Blue, too, had begun to lose her composure.

Piper let out her breath in a ragged, empty sigh. The paper was going thin in the spots where her tears fell against it. 

She barely had the strength to whisper, “Sometimes I wish you didn’t.”

… 

Piper had no idea how long she was supposed to wait for Blue to return before assuming the worst. Days, sure. She reasoned that it might take days to prepare and execute a project as big as _kill everyone in Nuka-World._ Weeks, though? What was she supposed to think after she’d heard nothing for two weeks and her mind was in a constant state of nervous, hazy sleeplessness and she’d taken to spending every free moment by the radio in case the Minutemen reported back on the air? When she’d gone back to Diamond City to look after her sister but in all reality, her sister was doing more looking after her? When the possibility of a life without Blue had become painfully much closer to reality, and Piper was struggling to find the will to stay in a life like that?

She was not going to survive it if Preston returned with no Blue at his side. The vault dweller had reached too deep inside her and taken hold of too much of her heart to be extracted from it now. Piper lived in fear of the moment that her world would come crashing down around her. And the longer time stretched, the more acute that fear became. She couldn’t eat for feeling sick. She couldn’t sleep for worry. She was wasting away, and still Blue hadn’t returned.

As two weeks crawled toward three, Piper wondered if there would be anything left of her for Blue to return to before long.

On the twentieth day, news came over Radio Freedom.

She was at her desk when it happened, staring at the same block of text on her terminal screen that she had been for hours. Everything had sort of faded into one long gray purgatory that hung like a fog around her, and she barely perceived what was going on around her. She couldn’t focus on her work, much less get any of it done. She was so deep in her haze that she was almost deaf to the sudden action on the radio.

The usual cycle of music was broken by a burst of static, then a live voice announcing, _Hello, listeners. This is Preston Garvey reporting in._ Here, Piper jolted into awareness, back going ramrod-straight. Her hand flew to the radio, fumbling for the volume knob. Preston’s voice grew louder, clearer. _I’m here to tell you that the Nuka-World mission was a success. The Minutemen are back in the Commonwealth and back at your service._

That was all she needed to hear before falling apart.

…

Blue took a week to show up to the doorstep of Publick Occurrences after the radio broadcast. A whole fucking _week_. Piper had started to believe that Preston had left out a very important piece of information in his announcement; namely, that maybe the vault dweller had died a horrible death at the hands of the raiders. All the overwhelming relief she’d felt upon hearing the broadcast slowly drained away over that week as Blue still failed to return, replaced again by dread. She swore this last month must have shortened her lifespan by a few extra decades.

But, as it turned out, Blue hadn’t died; not yet. She came knocking at Piper’s aluminum door on the twenty-seventh day of her absence. As soon as Piper cracked it open and saw who it was, she practically _flew_ into the vault dweller’s arms, forgetting all of her anger and sadness and irritation in favor of just _feeling Blue._ All the air shuddered out of her as the taller woman returned her embrace tightly, and her stubborn tension went with it. She felt like she might crumble in its absence, having relied on it to sustain her for so long.

Blue spoke first. “Piper, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she was murmuring into Piper’s hair, sounding like she was struggling not to cry herself. Her hands ran up and down the reporter’s back over and over as if reassuring herself that she was real; she was here. “I never wanted to leave you like that.” She kissed the top of the reporter’s head, then her temple, then her cheek, then whispered in her ear, “I hope you understand I just wanted to keep you safe.”

“Of course I understand,” Piper tried to say, but it came out as more of a half-sob. Damn, she was just feeling so _much._ She hid her face in her partner’s shoulder, embarrassed at herself. Then she remembered her month of suffering and drew back abruptly so she could glare into those lovely gray eyes. “But I’m still really fucking mad about it! You waited a week after getting back to tell me you were okay _why?_ ”

Blue’s cheeks flushed a deeper red than usual, and she dropped her chin. “I was working on something,” she supplied sheepishly, as if she realized now how silly that sounded. Good. Piper wanted her to feel suitably bad about it; just a little.

“Couldn’t it wait?” she demanded. Her anger was slipping through her fingers like sand in the comfort of Blue’s presence, but she still pressed, needing answers. What could have been so bloody important that it kept her partner away from her for a week after she miraculously returned from her suicide mission? She didn’t want to be selfish, but: “I’ve been going out of my mind here! If I hadn’t heard the broadcast on Radio Freedom—”

“I want to show you,” Blue interrupted her gently, hands settling on her shoulders to still her.

Piper’s irritation flared. “Are you listening to me? Blue, this isn’t a joke.”

The vault dweller leaned in and kissed her suddenly and softly enough that Piper’s thoughts scattered like dust in the wind. _Her lips._ She’d been afraid she might never feel them again. Might never feel any of her again. When the vault dweller drew back, all Piper could focus on was those stormy gray eyes holding her just as warmly as the arms around her. “I’m not joking,” Blue breathed. She ran her hands up to Piper’s face, then down her back again, soothing. Like she’d missed her touch as much as Piper had. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop by sooner, but I wanted to wait until it was done.”

Piper leaned into the attention. “Blue, what are you even talking about?” she tried weakly, the last of her ire dissipating at the relief of being in the vault dweller’s arms.

“Come to Sanctuary with me,” Blue urged in lieu of an answer.

That little _with me_ was like a warm flood of chems into Piper’s bloodstream, filling her with the purest sense of comfort. She’d been afraid getting left behind would turn into a long-term engagement. But here Blue was, safe and whole and inviting her along with her again. Everything felt right again.

“All right,” she exhaled softly into Blue’s shoulder. But she didn’t let go, and didn’t have any intention of doing so for a long time yet. On the contrary, she squeezed her vault dweller even tighter. She felt her face heating up slightly as she ventured to ask, “Just hold me for a little while first, okay?”

The hum of Blue’s laugh spread through her whole body, soothing her like the feeling of home. Blue _was_ home, she realized once she gave it a moment of thought. And Piper was there, now. 

“I will,” the vault dweller murmured into her hair.

And she did.

…


	16. Chapter 16

Piper wasn’t sure what she was expecting to find in Sanctuary; what could possibly have caused Blue to wait a _week_ before seeking her out after her most life-threatening venture yet.

Whatever vague guesses she had managed to dream up were nowhere close to what she found, though.

It was obvious upon entry to the once-peaceful little suburban street: a new addition, standing rickety but firm next to the yellow house that was the center of all goings-on in the neighborhood. A house.

When Piper laid eyes on it, she stopped in her tracks. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Now that she knew what Blue had been up to, she marvelled that it hadn’t taken her _longer_ than a week to complete. She marvelled that she’d been able to throw it up without Piper knowing; without her hearing about it somehow. And yet she still didn’t understand _why._

“Blue,” she said, at a loss, as the vault dweller noticed she’d stopped and turned back. “Why…” She spread her hands, waving at the two-story square structure with the two blue doors and the little balcony. She had an inkling, but she had to know: “What is this for?”

The vault dweller paced the few steps back to her, coming in close so the reporter had to tilt her chin up to look her in the eyes. And they were a sight to behold, those eyes: heavy, warm, rife with meaning. Blue reached for her hand, and Piper’s heart sped up as she let her take it. Suddenly she was sure of the answer even before Blue gave it.

“It’s for you,” the vault dweller told her.

And Piper—fuck, Piper had been brought to tears more times in the past six months than she had in her whole life previous—got the sudden urge to cry. She held it back resolutely, swallowing down the ache in her throat and meeting those beautiful eyes in disbelief. “Blue, I—”

“Wait,” the other woman interrupted, biting at her lip to suppress a little smirk and the excitement thinly hidden beneath. “Wait till you see it all, okay?” She squeezed Piper’s hand, and Piper managed a consenting nod. The next thing she knew, she was being dragged behind her partner to the blue door closest the street, holding back a surprised giggle as well as the tickle of tears. God, she was so happy to be with Blue again. And the thought that this was all for her, somehow—

She was a little less mad about the wait, to say the least.

Blue led her into the interior of the modest plank house and released her hand so that she could freely gesture around in introduction. Piper followed her lead, looking around. On one side of the space was a row of steel picnic tables with a shelf of comics against the wall; presumably a common area for the Minutemen to relax (relaxing—what a concept!). On the other was a staircase leading to the second floor, and beneath the incline stood a TV cabinet, complete with TV and a couch to face it. All of the furniture looked like it had been pulled from nearby scrap heaps and the blown-out houses of Blue’s old neighbors, which was probably exactly its origins.

While that was all thrilling enough, the real surprise came when Blue coaxed her up the staircase and Piper laid eyes on what the vault dweller must have been so excited about.

On the second floor lay another common room, this one more warmly decorated with potted plants and wall hangings in addition to the couch and TV, and on the far side, two walled-off areas with open doorways facing one another. Blue immediately led Piper to the spot between them where she could see into both and gestured to the doorway on the right. Here, she explained almost shyly, “Your bedroom. _Our_ bedroom, if you want.” 

Heart rate climbing at the implications of such a privilege, Piper moved to peer inside. Indeed, against the inner wall there lay a bed big enough for two and a pair of footlockers tucked underneath. The room also boasted a windowed end cap that overlooked the yellow house beside it: the balcony she had seen from outside. Two comfortable chairs sat facing the view, with a half-moon table and an ashtray between them. Blue really had thought of everything. And _acquired_ it, too, which was the most stunning part. How had Piper never noticed the absolute stockpile of scraps that it would have taken to put all this together? And how long had Blue been planning for it? How long had she intended to do this for Piper?

_For me._

_Holy cow…_

“You like it?” Piper turned to see Blue smiling through her question, and wondered if she had accidentally spoken aloud. “Wait till you see this.” And she turned Piper gently toward the second doorway, behind which lay…an _office._

A desk complete with a rolling chair, a terminal, a typewriter, and a lamp was pushed against the interior wall. Beside it was a short file cabinet and against the wall behind it was a bookshelf waiting to be stocked.

“I figured you shouldn’t have to put the paper on hold every time you go traveling with me,” Blue said by her shoulder as she gaped at the sight.

And Piper… Piper felt full to bursting with absolute adoration for her companion. Of all the kind gestures Blue could have made, building her a whole fucking house had never even occurred to Piper as a possibility. How was she supposed to react to this? How was she ever supposed to thank her enough? She couldn’t even find the words to express how she was feeling, which was rare for her. So, “Oh my God, Blue,” she breathed, stumbling along, “I—this is—you—” She shook her head, totally at a loss. What the hell had she ever done to deserve this woman? Finally she just turned to her and tried to let the look on her face speak for her. That, and the hoarse, “You’re amazing,” that made it out of her throat.

Blue—perfect, beautiful Blue—just smiled at her. “I’m glad you like it.”

 _Understatement of the century,_ Piper thought. “I love it,” she corrected, and then realized that that didn’t quite cover it. Before she lost her nerve, she plunged on, softer: “I love _you_.”

Blue’s smile widened, crinkling her silver eyes. Then, “Are you…” Her grin faded just a little as she caught her lower lip between her teeth. “…less mad?”

Piper let out a helpless laugh and shook her head. “I’m so fucking mad,” she said, although she had no idea what she was feeling anymore except overwhelming warmth for this woman. Warmth, and…and something else. Stronger. Deeper. Despite her words, she threw her arms around the taller woman and hugged her tight. Blue returned the embrace, adding a feather-light kiss to her ear, and Piper positively shuddered. “God, Blue. You’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days.” She left it ambiguous as to whether she meant from worry or the electric current of desire now racing through her veins at Blue’s attention. She felt ready to explode if the storm of relief and anger and love and excitement didn’t find a route of escape somehow. So she gave it one.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” she rasped, tilting her head just enough that Blue’s lips would have an easier time finding her mouth, if she wanted (Piper wanted).

“Me too,” the vault dweller returned, gladly closing the distance to give her a single, lingering kiss; more than the sum of all their insufficient words. Then, mischievous, dark, with more feeling hidden behind it than she dared express, “Want to show me?”

Piper froze in something like shock, wondering if this was real or if she’d finally fantasized hard enough to make herself hallucinate, and when the scene didn’t evaporate around her, she was able to breathe again—barely.

At least until she surged forward and pushed Blue against the wall and caught her lips with a breed of desperation she had never felt before—equal parts frightening and thrilling. Blue seemed surprised by the intensity at first, fumbling to catch up, but it didn’t take her long. Once she did, she quickly turned the tables on the reporter, spinning them so Piper was the one with her back against the wall (the way she liked) and the younger woman could throw her arms around her neck and melt into her. Was that— _oh, God—_ was that Blue’s knee between her legs? That just fired Piper up all the more—Blue’s effortless acquiescence, her confidence, almost convincing enough for Piper to forget the vault dweller’s complicated past (almost) in the heat of her enthusiasm.

But she couldn’t, and the inevitable guilt came back to slam into her all at once like a bolt of radstorm lightning. The impact made her jerk back from Blue with a gasp and search her eyes for the usual shadow that hung in them at times like this. But Blue looked nothing but raw and open and—and _loving_ , making no attempt to stop her, and Piper was hit with the even more startling realization that maybe Blue _wouldn’t_ this time. A shot of panic made her hand fly to the other woman’s leg, pushing it away, and Blue pulled back.

“Are you okay?” the vault dweller questioned softly, roughly, and Piper almost laughed aloud.

“Me? I should be asking _you_ that,” she replied with just a hint of hysteria to her tone. She had no idea what she was going to do if Blue didn’t pour her usual cool restraint over Piper’s flame of desire. She knew what she _wanted_ to do, obviously, but that’s as far as she’d ever gone. Wanting. Longing. But making peace with never having, because, “You don’t like this kind of thing, Blue.”

Blue gave her a long, heavy look and, for the longest time, gave no answer but to lean in and kiss her slow and deep. Piper had almost forgotten she’d ever spoken when finally the vault dweller said against her lips, “But you do.” 

_Why_ was that simple statement enough to send a bullet of pleasure racing through her from top to toe? Piper pressed herself into Blue’s embrace; into the kisses the vault dweller was trailing over her neck, and tried not to moan out loud. 

“We’re in this together, Piper,” Blue whispered against the side of her throat, and this time Piper couldn’t stop the breathless sound that escaped her. “You matter too. What you want matters too.”

Piper felt like she was floating six inches outside her body. No way this was real. No way Blue’s hands were running up and down her sides, coming equally close to her breasts and her ass on each pass, but never touching—not yet. No way her hot breath was rippling over her, intensifying the burn already simmering below her skin; in her core. No way she was saying what Piper thought she was.

But she was. “So tell me what you want,” Blue murmured, dark and low, and what little composure Piper had left flew out of her grasp.

“You,” she gasped out. She gripped Blue’s face in her hands and stared her right in the eyes and knew she must look edging on desperate, but she couldn’t muster the mental awareness to feel embarrassed about it. All she could comprehend was Blue’s warmth against her and the silver of her steady eyes and the offer she was making; one Piper had thought too good to be true. “Please.” She leaned in for a quick, firm kiss, and there she found the courage to blurt out, “Take me.” Then backpedaled. _Shit. Too much._ “I mean, if—”

Blue knew exactly what she was going to say and cut her off with another kiss, harder than the rest. “I’m sure,” she answered the unfinished question. Then her grip loosened, and her expression grew soft. Always so soft with Piper. “Are you?”

 _Oh, God, this is happening. Holy shit._ The reporter could only manage a nod—shaky, but certain.

Blue searched her eyes as she moved close again, planting one hand against the wall beside Piper’s head and running the other over the collar of her coat. Her knee returned to nudge in between Piper’s own legs, sliding forward painfully slow, severely impairing her ability to take a sufficient breath. “Stop me anytime,” she said in complete seriousness. When Piper met her eyes, all she found there was care. Not lust, or—or greed, or any form of affliction that might drive anyone else to a haze of mindless _taking_. No; Blue was nothing but pure, and Piper was suddenly brought near tears at the realization that she did not deserve this woman in the slightest. 

Yet here Blue was, running almost reverent hands over Piper’s shoulders; back; _ass_ (finally) as she slipped her coat off her body and to the floor, leaning in for a kiss so tender it was like she worried her partner might break. Like she was something delicate; precious. Like she mattered.

That alone was enough to make Piper’s knees weak. She wound her now-bare arms around the vault dweller’s neck to support herself, and as it turned out, it was good she did. She was not at all expecting the wave of crippling pleasure that swept over her the moment Blue gripped her hips and _pulled_.

“Oh,” was all she could get out through a slack jaw, because Blue wasn’t done. With every press of her leg against Piper’s body it got harder and harder to think. So she didn’t—she just let herself _feel_ for a single precious moment and sensed all the reservations within her burn to a crisp.

Then Blue’s calloused hands slipped under her shirt.

“Oh, _shit._ ” Piper scrabbled for a tighter grip on Blue’s shoulders, panting. If something as simple as that was hitting her so hard, she doubted she’d last very long under any sort of further attention. That was partly thrilling and partly embarrassing, but she didn’t have to dwell on that long, because just then the vault dweller’s hands found her chest and her lips found her neck and all the points of contact between them erupted into _flame_ and Piper could do nothing but let her head fall back against the wall and (poorly) stifle a moan.

She didn’t even realize the noise had formed a shape until the vault dweller pulled back to look at her attentively. _Oh, man._ “Blue,” she whimpered again, aware this time, the rising urgency in her tone more telling than any words she could have used. Her hands couldn’t decide between pulling the other woman closer or pushing her back toward the bed.

Blue kindly chose for her. She gripped the reporter around the waist and swung them around so that a single step backward brought Piper tumbling onto the mattress. She was reminded with a jolt of the first time they’d found themselves like this, one house over in the same haven of Sanctuary, so similar and yet _so_ vastly different. Piper had had all her clothes on then, for one thing. She was quickly losing them now, as she yanked her shirt over her head and off and felt the mattress against her bare back.

She started to sit up, hungry for Blue’s touch back on her skin—on _more_ of her skin—but her partner didn’t give her the chance. The vault dweller crawled smoothly onto the mattress so she was braced over Piper’s body and in an instant their lips were crashing together again. Blue’s hand came up and, in a tender counterpoint to their working mouths, brushed gently along Piper’s brow to push away the straying strands of hair there. And—

It was moments like this that must have set them apart from all the other desperate couples in the Commonwealth. Moments where they paused in their wild pursuit of a temporary goal and simply paid _attention_ to each other, _cared_ for each other. Moments where they were allowed to catch their breath and look into one another’s eyes and maybe break the silence with a nervous whisper of, “I love you,” and share a stupid grin before they were losing themselves to the heat again.

Piper was intimately and agonizingly aware of the slow, _slow_ descent of Blue’s hand from her torso to her waistband. She growled and tried to shift to make it arrive faster, but Blue took the opportunity to be an ass and simply smirk against her lips instead of complying. Piper couldn’t exactly retaliate in kind, so she settled for tiding herself over with a thorough exploration of that damned smirk and just what Blue was hiding behind it. She couldn’t get enough of kissing Blue. The vault dweller was supremely lucky for that fact, or she would have been receiving a much less gracious response to her teasing.

Finally, _finally,_ Blue got to her destination, and Piper was so lust-addled at that point that she fumbled her jeans open herself to grant easier access. She couldn’t bring herself to go farther than that, though; feeling anxiety prick at her through the fog of desire. There was a point that being exposed became _too_ exposed, but she wasn’t exactly sure where it lay.

Blue seemed to understand, giving her a gentle kiss below the ear as she followed Piper’s lead to the place she’d been aching for contact for so long. And—

At the first passing touch, Piper _sobbed_. She didn’t realize she’d grabbed Blue’s wrist in a grip of steel till the vault dweller paused and said gently, “We don’t have to do this.”

“No.” Piper released her quickly, embarrassed. “It—it’s okay. I’m just not—” She let out her breath in a shuddering huff. This didn’t feel real. She didn’t feel real. She shifted against Blue’s hand, and _that_ sharpened things into focus. “I’m not used to being this—vulnerable.” And it scared her, to be absolutely honest. It scared her almost more than it intrigued her.

But not quite.

“Do you trust me?” Blue asked, barely above a whisper, and it made Piper’s chest convulse again with the intensity of her emotion. _How_ was this woman _real?_ Surely no one this perfect could exist. She clenched her fists in the sheets, needing some sort of channel for the aching knot in her chest.

“Yes, Blue,” was her raw, immediate response. “ _Yes_. More than anyone.”

Her partner hummed in pleasant acknowledgement and her breath breezed against Piper’s ear so that her whole world narrowed to that single point. Well—that, and one other thing. Blue touched her again, and she almost missed the vault dweller's next words, whispered softly against her temple. “Then relax, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

And beyond that, Piper couldn’t comprehend much except that Blue absolutely _did_.

…

  
  


Tuesday was sitting up in bed— _their bed!—_ with Piper asleep beside her, head pillowed on her hip, which couldn’t have been all that comfortable but was insanely endearing nonetheless.

The vault dweller was watching her passively, stroking her fingers through her hair as she slept. Normally she might have worried about waking the younger girl up, but Piper was out like a light. Tuesday doubted guiltily that she’d gotten much sleep during her absence. The reporter had been too anxious to sleep well even _before_ she left, let alone while she was in the clutches of near-certain death. She probably shouldn’t have waited the extra week before going to Diamond City, surprise or not. She’d just been so focused on making things up to Piper that she figured the sacrifice would pay off in the end. Her lips curled in a slight grin as she considered that. It _had_ paid off, judging by the look of absolute serenity on the papergirl’s sleeping face—plus her rumpled hair and rumpled sheets and current state of half-undress. Tuesday wasn’t one for sex, but with Piper, she didn’t have to be. She could do nothing but lavish attention on her dear partner and enjoy her enjoyment and leave it at that, and things were perfect. She knew Piper would never pressure her, and she would never leave Piper wanting. She wished it could have been that way with Nate.

The thought of him didn’t hurt quite as much anymore. She had mourned him, and she had avenged him, and she had clung to the memory of him until the effort did more harm than good, and then she let him go. She wouldn’t forget him, no. But it was better for her to live like this; free as she could be of the past.

All thanks to Piper. Tuesday watched her, now: the rise and fall of her exposed ribs with each steady breath; the twitch of her eyelids as she dreamed; the cascade of her dark hair threading between Tuesday’s idle fingers. Piper was present and raw and real and Tuesday cherished the awareness of how _alive_ she was. The warmth of her against the vault dweller’s side was almost like she’d gone and woven the concept of _love_ into a physical blanket and thrown it over them both. Simply being here together like this was love itself. That wasn’t a betrayal to Nate, because she didn’t love Piper _instead;_ she loved Piper _too._ It had taken her far too long to realize that.

Tuesday let her eyes fall shut and breathed a long sigh through her nose as that transcendent warmth spread through her. She knew she should follow Piper into sleep soon; the more exhausted she was, the less sense her mind made. But she didn’t want this moment to end just yet. She had missed Piper these past few weeks, and she was intent on soaking up every second with her like water to a sponge. Even if all she had to do during those seconds was feel her breathe and watch her sleep. These moments of peace were rare for them. 

She drew a deep breath only to sigh it out again. If she didn’t sleep tonight, she’d regret it tomorrow. She compromised with herself by shimmying carefully down the mattress until she was lying down, close enough to Piper to wrap her in loving arms and share the warmth that way.

“I love you,” she whispered before surrendering to the weary weight of her eyelids. And though Piper didn’t wake, she snuggled absently closer, and it was almost like she’d said it back.

…


	17. Chapter 17

Tuesday wished morning could have brought with it the same feeling of peace as last night. But, as was typical of the cutthroat Commonwealth they lived in, the new day just brought new challenges her way.

She’d barely set foot outside their new house when Preston intercepted her on the way to grab breakfast.

“General,” he greeted with an incline of his head, sounding like he regretted bringing her bad news so early in the morning. His knuckles were pale around the barrel of his ever-present laser rifle, betraying his apprehension. He must have been waiting for her for a while. “Hostiles have been spotted scouting the area around the Castle.”

Tuesday invited him to walk beside her with a gesture, figuring he might be interested in some food too. “The Institute again?” she guessed, trying to suppress a sigh, too late.

“Yes, ma’am,” the Minuteman affirmed with just as much regret, falling into step with her.

Tuesday grunted. She made it to the corner of the yellow house, where Marcy Long hunched over a pot on the cookfire. She leaned over it perfunctorily; smelled like radstag. She idly went about securing a bowl while she mulled over the news. On the one hand, they had been able to hold back the Institute the first time they had raided the Castle, shortly after the Minutemen had finished repairing the walls and stocking them with armaments (thank God). On the other, it was a fight that almost cost them their lives. “I’d rather not take another hit to HQ so soon after the last one,” she admitted after a moment, passing Preston the filled bowl and reaching for another.

He accepted it, but didn’t move to eat just yet. His dark eyes were locked on Tuesday’s face, his jaw hard. “What are you implying, General?” he asked, though they both knew that he was fully aware what she was implying.

She met his gaze just as grimly. “It’s time to take the fight to the Institute. We need to end this before anyone else gets hurt.”

“You think we’re ready?” Preston’s concern was evident in the slant of his brows; the doubt in his words.

“I think we’ve run out of time,” Tuesday confessed. It was far from a _yes_ , but it was the best she could do under the circumstances. They had discussed the possibility before, and they had the bones of a plan. All that was left was executing it. Of course, that was much easier said than done. “I’ll get in there, and I’ll get that relay working,” she recapped. “Then it’s on.”

Preston’s face had never looked graver, but he gave her an affirming nod. “Understood. I’ll muster our forces and prepare for your signal.”

Tuesday returned the gesture, feeling about as confident as he looked—that is to say, not very. The end of the conversation only succeeded in settling another layer of tension onto her shoulders rather than relieving it. Facing the Institute… They had talked about it; dreamed about it; plotted about it for so long, but now it was becoming a reality. They were nearing the end, whatever that may mean for the Commonwealth. For them as residents of it. Even now, Tuesday felt torn. Shaun was at the Institute. They had parted on no uncertain terms, but that didn’t mean she didn’t still feel some lack of closure at the fact that it was her _son_ she was working against. 

But she had other people to take care of now. Piper, and Nat, and Preston, and the Minutemen, not to mention all the settlers who were depending on them to make the Commonwealth as safe as they possibly could, which by definition included neutralizing the monster in the closet who had threatened them with kidnapping and murder for all this time. The simple truth was that if the Institute wouldn’t change their ways, they had to go, and Tuesday and her forces were the only ones who could stop them. It wasn’t a very comforting thought. And just when she had only recently fought her way out of a different deathtrap a ways west of here. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, she supposed.

That thought drew her gaze down to the bowl of stew resting in her hands, still lightly steaming. She didn’t feel very hungry anymore.

… 

They’d made it into the Institute. An army of synths lay broken behind them, and an army more stood ahead. Tuesday pressed on with her Minutemen at her back.

“So this is what it looks like,” Preston mused as they stepped through the next opening into the Bioscience wing.

Tuesday paused to turn to her fighters. She’d forgotten that they hadn’t seen all this before like she had. Their dusty, tattered earth-toned clothes stood out against the sleek, whitewashed walls in stark contrast, echoing the dichotomy between the Commonwealth and the Institute. It made her angry to see how the organization had simply holed up down here and hoarded valuable knowledge and supplies to themselves instead of helping anyone else; how their plan to save humanity had simply consisted of wiping out all opposition and then scaring the rest into compliance. Based on the looks on the other Minutemen’s faces, they were thinking along the same lines.

“Really makes you want to blow them up just for being so arrogant, huh?” Piper hit the nail on the head as usual. Her lips were set in a thin line, and she was fingering her pistol like she just couldn’t wait to destroy the ghost that had haunted her—had haunted all of them—for so long.

“That’s the plan,” replied Tuesday grimly. Her eyes met Piper’s, and a sober look passed between them. Where there was usually so much warmth behind that hazel gaze, it was now as cold as stone. And Tuesday completely understood.

They pushed on toward the reactor.

…

The bomb was planted. The civilians were evacuated. Virgil’s serum was in her hands. The Institute was set to be destroyed. All that was left to do was get the hell out of here.

Except, when Preston gave the order, Sturges responded with an uncertain noise instead of an affirmative. “I would, sir, but uh…this kid showed up.” His voice was cautious. “He claims he’s the General’s son.”

 _Oh no. Please, God, no,_ Tuesday begged internally, knowing— _f_ _earing_ just what Sturges meant, even before she turned stiffly, almost mechanically, toward the control room and saw that her prayer was denied.

There, standing in front of the control board where Sturges was _this close_ to executing their escape, was Shaun. Institute Shaun. Ten-year-old synth Shaun.

This was _not_ what she needed right now.

“Oh, God, Blue,” Piper breathed in horror, knowing exactly what was going on from the story Tuesday had told her. Her hand curled steadyingly around the armor frame on the taller woman’s elbow.

Tuesday hardly noticed. She was staring at the synth, her ears beginning to ring as mingled anger and panic swelled in her chest. “How did he get in here?” was the first question that whipped out of her mouth. 

“Ran in from the main compound during all the commotion, General,” Sturges provided. He had the good sense to look guilty when he noticed the pallor in Tuesday’s cheeks. “He said he knows you so I let him in.”

She could feel the curious gazes of all the Minutemen turn to her at once and nearly snapped under the pressure. 

“Mom! Don’t leave me here! I want to go with you,” the synth cried out as if on cue, and that was the last straw.

“I am not your mother!” Tuesday roared, lashing out at the nearest wall to release some of her fury in a way that wouldn’t hurt anyone. The metal dented under the force of her power armor, and the Minutemen jumped. Even Piper took a startled step back. That just made Tuesday feel worse. “You’re a robot designed to _look_ like my real son just to _torture_ me!” Her voice broke on the last phrase and she was too distraught to care.

How _dare_ Shaun do this? How dare he treat her whole life as a bloody science experiment, and then expect her to join his side? How dare he have the audacity to blame _her_ for the fate of the Institute when _he_ was the one who built it into a shady, sinister force of discord in the Commonwealth? How dare he deprive her of the family she’d spent so long searching for, only to force this mockery of a replacement on her instead?

Was she supposed to rescue this fake and raise him as her own now? Was she supposed to recover all the years she’d lost by living out a lie? Was she supposed to love this not-Shaun like the son she’d never known?

“H-how can you say that? I know you’re my mother!” not-Shaun whined, just to twist the knife. She supposed he was designed to sound like her son, too. What a cruel joke.

“Sturges,” she said, startling the engineer out of his rapt stupor, “fire this thing up.”

Several voices protested at once. “You’re just going to leave me here? I hate you!” not-Shaun shouted, like _that_ was supposed to change her mind. At the same time, Sturges stammered out, “N-now General, you’re not really going to leave this kid here, to—to burn?” and Piper said in gentle contrast to the clamor, “Blue.”

Tuesday turned to Piper, because she couldn’t stand to face the other voices. What the hell would she do without Piper?

The reporter reached up from tiptoe to cradle Tuesday’s face in both hands through the ruins of her busted helmet. “I know you’re angry and hurt and confused,” she began earnestly, hoarsely, and the vault dweller couldn’t argue, “but Shaun or not; synth or not, that’s a kid over there.” When Tuesday dropped her eyes in shame, Piper ran a thumb along her cheekbone soothingly. “You don’t have to raise him, but at least give him a chance. Okay?”

Her words made sense. Of course they did. She was right, and normally Tuesday would have agreed wholeheartedly. She was familiar enough with synths like Nick and Glory to believe that they were more than human enough to deserve a chance at a normal life. She knew that she should have felt the same about the boy standing in front of her, but she was still reluctant, still bitter, as she nodded stiffly and raised red-rimmed eyes to Sturges.

“Relay him out. Put him someplace I won’t have to see him,” she said hollowly.

The few grunts and murmurs that rose from the Minutemen around her were almost enough to make her lose her head again. Were they really going to judge her for this? Who the hell were they to do so? They didn’t have a _clue_ what was going on. All they knew how to do was point and shoot.

Piper’s hand sliding into hers brought her back down again. She remembered that she was still supposed to be giving orders; that they were still in enemy territory, and continued, “As for the rest of us, let’s get to a safe distance and then send this place sky high.”

“You heard the General,” Preston backed her up when the other Minutemen were slow to respond. “Into the relay room.”

And into the relay room they went.

Shaun was the first to go, and Tuesday found that she didn’t even care where Sturges sent him. Next went Preston, then Piper, and then Tuesday herself felt the disorienting tug in her middle and saw the flash of light that meant it was her turn.

She rematerialized on the roof of the Mass Fusion building. The detonator that would end the world all over again sat on a crate against the railing in front of her. She eyed it warily as the rest of the Minutemen appeared at her back.

“Sturges figured that this was a safe distance outside the blast radius,” Preston explained their position as he approached the railing on her right. Then he inclined his head toward the detonator. “Whenever you want to see ‘humanity’s best hope for the future’ go up in smoke, just hit that button.”

Though he obviously meant the title as a joke, it shot Tuesday through with an unexpected rush of guilt. Without all the subterfuge; the conniving; the kidnapping; the fearmongering, the Institute might really have been the beacon of hope that they cracked themselves up to be. They possessed technology no faction here on the surface could have imagined. They had access to clean, healthy food and water, and they lived a life of comfort arguably better than even prewar existence. They _could_ have truly helped people, if they’d ever chosen to see them as more than a threat at worst and an intriguing experiment at best. It they’d chosen to open themselves up to the world as an ally instead of looming as a monster in the closet. But they were just too far removed from any moral objectivity to even consider that as an option. They believed there was no hope for the outside world; that trying was a waste.

That was her biggest regret about Shaun—the real Shaun, whom she’d had a chance to know and love but could not sacrifice her conscience to do it. She still felt that maybe if she’d tried harder to explain the value of this world to him—the value of the people within it, like Piper and Preston—maybe he could have understood. Maybe he would have listened, and maybe this destructive end would never have been necessary. Or maybe, had Tuesday been willing to stick with his plans longer, she would have gained enough sway in the Institute to convince them herself.

But, she supposed, it was useless to dwell on ‘what if’s. All she could do was make the choices that she thought were best, and that had landed her here. Their last remaining option was the nuclear option.

So, at Preston’s prompt of, “General?” she waited no longer. She reached out to the detonator, flipped the cover and pressed the button before she had a chance to hesitate.

The end of the Institute looked hauntingly like the end of her world two hundred years ago.

She closed her eyes against the sight of the blazing mushroom cloud.

… 

Piper felt nothing but overwhelming, transcendent relief upon watching the Institute go up in flames. She wanted to laugh aloud, but thought that might come across a little coarse. Instead she just stammered out her awe as best she could. “I—I can’t believe it. They’re gone. The Institute’s _gone_.” Saying it didn’t make it feel any more real, but there was the billowing smoke and the sinkhole, right there. All the fears of her twenty-four years scattered to the wind before her eyes. She felt torn between cheering and throwing up on the spot. She turned to Blue, virtually vibrating with excitement. “Do you know what this means?”

“I have an inkling,” Blue replied somewhat distantly.

But Piper was on a roll. Why shouldn’t she be? They were _free._ “No more kidnappings. No more sleepless nights, terrified your neighbor is plotting against you. No more fear.” She felt breathless, like she’d either just been punched in the gut or had too much Nuka-Cola. “Thanks to you, we don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

Blue shook her head slightly. “There’s still plenty to be afraid of out there,” she lamented, voice raspy, almost absent.

Piper furrowed her brows. “Well, yeah.” Blue hadn’t been around long enough to build the same fearful history with the Institute that everyone else had, but she’d expected her to at least be happy that they’d won. They’d made the choice to protect the people of the Commonwealth, like they always did. Sacrifices aside, that was something, wasn’t it? “But you took care of the big one.” 

Blue didn’t respond, and Piper spent the silence watching her, joy fading away to be replaced by worry. It was a sight to behold: her vault dweller standing at the edge of the roof, silhouetted against the sky darkened by the ashes of the Institute. She looked thin, pale, gaunt—almost frail in the wake of the literally earthshaking decision she’d just made. She looked like the burden of the whole world was pressing down on her shoulders, and in a way, Piper supposed it was. She looked alone, and Piper wanted to fix that. She stepped forward to close the distance between herself and her companion, watching Blue’s face for any sign as to what she needed. When the vault dweller didn’t even look at her, her eyes locked on the massive smoking sinkhole where the Institute had just been, Piper reached out to touch her arm gently. Blue jolted, and Piper’s heart ached. She couldn’t imagine what the other woman must be feeling. “Are you…okay?” she asked softly, lamely, but it was all she could do.

Blue tore her gaze away from the city ruins with effort. The gray of her irises remained clouded as she finally looked at Piper. “Um.” Her expression twisted, brows furrowing deeply. It was the look she got when she was trying not to cry. She cleared her throat and glanced down as if to hide it. “Yeah,” she said unconvincingly to the ground between their feet. Then shrugged. “I will be.”

Of course she wasn’t okay. Piper doubted that anybody would be okay after wiping out what basically amounted to a whole civilization. They’d evacuated whom they could, but that didn’t mean they’d saved everyone. They hadn’t saved Shaun. She doubted that this was the kind of closure Blue was seeking with her lost son; the last link to her past. She was at a loss for words that would even begin to offer the comfort Blue needed, so she simply said, “I’m here for you, Blue,” and reached for the vault dweller to pull her into her arms.

Blue allowed the embrace, although it was a moment before she held Piper back. Piper could feel the tension singing through every one of her muscles and ached to relieve them. “I know,” the taller woman whispered shakily. There was a pause, as if she were deciding whether to cross a line, and then a weary sigh as she dropped her head onto Piper’s shoulder and let her tears flow.

Piper held her as she cried. In her periphery, she saw Preston gather his Minutemen and retreat a ways across the roof, giving them as much privacy as the space allowed. She’d have to talk to him later; congratulate him on this victory. They never would have made it this far without the Minutemen’s support. Right now, though, she was only concerned with Blue.

The vault dweller sobbed, and Piper shushed her gently, running soothing fingers through her hair with one hand and holding her close with the other. She could feel the moisture of tears against her neck, but she was far from caring. Blue had held her during her moments of weakness, too. It was the least she could do to be a literal shoulder to cry on.

The vault dweller’s grip on her was almost tight enough to be crushing, but as the minutes wore by and Blue’s tears gradually dried up, it relaxed to something softer. More of a mutual embrace than a desperate hold. Piper shifted her attentions to Blue’s back, where she began to knead away the tightness of her muscles, and felt the vault dweller slump against her.

“Thanks,” she murmured into Piper’s collar, sounding marginally more put-together than before.

“No, Blue.” The reporter tipped her chin up to place a kiss on her partner’s temple. “Thank _you._ ” _For everything,_ she thought, but saved that for later. For a time when Blue was more equipped to handle it.

When the other woman failed to respond but for a weak grunt, Piper brushed another series of kisses down the side of her face, chaste and comforting. She sighed, and felt Blue do so at the same time. Over Blue’s shoulder, she could still see the skyline that they’d just altered forever. It was for the best, really. Even if her partner was conflicted about it now.

“Welcome to day one of the new Commonwealth,” she whispered to no one and everyone at once.

…


	18. Chapter 18

Tuesday was looking forward to crashing somewhere safe for some rest and if not relaxation, then at least time to recharge. Especially after the physical and emotional hell that had been the final attack on the Institute.

Only, when she and Piper got back to Diamond City the night after the Institute’s end, what they found was the furthest thing from restful.

The crisis was obvious upon entry. The gate guards were in a relative frenzy. Past them, Danny Sullivan was crumpled on the ground along the path to the mayor’s office, blood staining the hands clutched to his stomach. Pastor Clements knelt in front of him, murmuring calming words, while a scattering of Diamond City residents commented less calmly in the background.

“Mayor McDonough,” the wounded Sullivan was saying through his pain as the two women approached in a hurry. “I saw him with one of those Institute synths.” He broke off to take a ragged breath and then gathered his strength to add: “Piper was right. He’s one of them!” 

All eyes automatically shifted to Piper, who pressed her lips together soberly. “For once I don’t feel like gloating about that,” she confessed. Her hand was already going to her pistol at her side. “Where is he, Danny?”

“Locked in his office,” the guardsman managed from between clenched teeth. “Threw me off the elevator and ran.”

_ Ouch,  _ thought Tuesday. Danny was lucky he hadn’t broken his neck on the way down. She figured he might have broken some other things, though, considering the tight ball he’d curled into around his bleeding torso. She knelt down in front of him, fishing in her bag for a stimpak. Her fingers closed on the last one. “Here,” she said, pulling it out and offering it to Pastor Clements to administer. She had some hunting to do. “Hang in there, Danny.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Piper backed her up, as much for the bystanders’ benefit as Sullivan’s own. Tuesday got it. Better that the panic be dissolved as soon as possible.

The vault dweller stood, turning to her companion with rage smoldering in her eyes. Rage for Danny’s sake, and Piper’s sake, and all the innocent residents of Diamond City’s sake. The mayor had to go down. She reached for her own gun. “Let’s go end this.”

“Gladly,” Piper returned just as grimly, and they headed onto the elevator and started up.

The ride to the mayor’s office could not have gone any slower. 

“Come on, come on,” Tuesday muttered through gritted teeth as the old hydraulics hauled them up toward their target inches at a time. The system—all of Diamond City’s systems, really—could use a major overhaul. Who knew when something so mundane would suddenly become a matter of life and death?

A Diamond City security guard was pounding on the closed door to the mayor’s office when the elevator finally spilled them onto the upper level. They hurried over, guns in hand. The guard looked as if he’d been there for a while, but the door was still shut tight.

“He’s locked the door. It won’t budge,” the man growled between futile kicks to the sealed blue metal. “And he’s got Geneva as a hostage!”

Tuesday cursed at the very same instant Piper did. She could hear the mayor bellowing something from behind the closed door, but it faded into the background in favor of her whirling thoughts. “There’s got to be another way in,” she mused tightly. She knelt at the junction of the two doors, running her hand along it in search of a pickable lock or latch mechanism, but found nothing. “Damn it.” She turned away in frustration, scanning the rest of the room for anything useful: something to lever the doors apart, maybe, or jimmy the hinges loose. Her vantage point from her knees allowed her eyes to lock on something out of place beneath Geneva’s desk: a flash of red. “There!” Tuesday practically dove across the floor to slam her hand down on the hidden button, and the stubborn doors clicked open behind her.

“Nice going, Blue,” Piper affirmed as she marched through the new opening with her weapon drawn. Her voice took on a much harder edge when she addressed the mayor: “Time to answer for what you’ve done, you synth bastard!”

The portly man was positioned over the struggling form of his secretary, holding her by the hair. Fortunately for her, his pistol was pointed at the intruders rather than her. Less fortunate for Tuesday and Piper.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” the false McDonough hollered with a tinge of hysteria. “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen next. I’m going to walk out of this city a free man—unharmed, with my dignity intact.” He waved his gun at each of them in turn, eyes wild. “And I’ll kill any of you filthy savages who try to stop me!”

“You’re not getting off the hook that easy, McDonough,” Piper snarled back. Her finger tightened on the trigger of her 10mm, but in the same instant, McDonough turned his own gun upon Geneva, who screamed.

“Wait!” Tuesday lunged forward enough to get the synth’s attention, raising her arm to hold Piper back as well. She’d rather solve this without any more bloodshed. She fell back on her drills from law school. “Let her go. You don’t need a hostage. We’ll make sure you get a fair trial before the people of Diamond City.”

“Lord knows you’ve got plenty to answer for,” Piper put in acerbically. 

“A trial?” echoed McDonough bitterly. “You know how these people feel about synths. I won’t be thrown to the wolves in the name of some twisted notion of justice!”

“Then you’ll pay with your life,” Tuesday shot back.

McDonough aimed his weapon at her.

All at once four sets of gunfire filled the room. Three were trained on the mayor, and he barely got a shot off—at Piper, naturally—before he was riddled full of holes. He slumped to the floor, limp, the metallic component in his chest catching the yellow light for all to see. Proof that Piper had been right all along.

“Damn,” said reporter breathed on a weary sigh, straightening up from her fighting stance as the blood and dust settled. At Tuesday’s questioning look, she curled her lip in a half-grimace. “I can’t say McDonough didn’t deserve worse, but I bet it’ll be a while before the people are up for a mayoral election.”

The vault dweller considered that soberly. The city would be better off in the long run without an Institute spy preying on its people, but the risk of a power vacuum in the mayor’s place was a very real threat. “Who’s next in line?” she queried, looking between Piper and the guard at her shoulder.

“The city council,” supplied Piper in a tone that said she wasn’t too thrilled about that. “Hopefully they’ll do a better job of picking up the pieces than he did.” She jerked her chin at the corpse of the false mayor.

“They’re in a much better position to do so now,” Tuesday consoled, stepping closer to her companion to block out the morbid sight. “Now that they’re free of the Institute.” She flicked the brim of Piper’s press hat pointedly. “And now that they have the truth.”

Piper offered a slight smile. “Couldn’t have done it without you, Blue.”

“I guess you’re kind of a hero,” offered the Diamond City guard, and thanks to his mask they weren’t certain which woman he was talking to. It was fitting, really. Piper had done most of the heavy lifting here in the city, but the conspiracy never would have come to light if Tuesday hadn’t taken out the Institute. 

“It was a shared victory,” the vault dweller replied with a grin, and this time Piper returned it.

… 

Nightfall found them relaxing together on the roof of Publick Occurrences, a cola in Tuesday’s hand and a cigarette between Piper’s fingers. The reporter was leaned into her vault dweller’s side, and Tuesday encircled her waist with an arm. The closeness fought off the ever-present nighttime chill. Tuesday had her head tipped back to appreciate the view of the stars, which, at great cost, were starkly visible in the absence of any smog. She hadn’t ever seen them like this—like a handful of silver glitter thrown across a black canvas—before the war. She was glad that beauty still existed here in the aftermath.

Almost as if that thought had summoned her, Piper chose that moment to shift and let out a stream of smoke that curled around the stars. “So, Blue,” she began, voice husky from the drag, “is this the ‘afterward’ you were talking about before? With the Institute gone, the raiders dead, and Diamond City safe from the tin can I’ve been calling bullshit on for ages?” Tuesday could feel her tilt her head to lay eyes on her face. 

She looked down from the sky to the other beautiful thing the night offered and let her lips curl in a little smile. “Yeah. I guess it is,” she admitted. And while she had never actually expected to  _ get  _ here—dying gruesomely in the process seeming much more likely—she was at peace with all they’d accomplished. She was at peace with having no clear course for her future but to take care of this place and these people and this papergirl at her side.

“What will you do?” Piper asked softly, like she didn’t want to disturb the quiet.

Tuesday was surprised by the question. They’d talked about this, hadn’t they? She’d told Piper she was sticking around, hadn’t she? But at the same time, she completely understood. Certainty was hard to come by out here in the wasteland. “Enjoy the night under the stars with my beautiful, heroic companion, I’d say,” she murmured back, bending her neck to give said companion a short, sweet kiss. It didn’t answer the question Piper had meant, and she knew that, but she couldn’t resist the opportunity to flirt a little.

Piper hummed pleasantly against her lips. When they pulled back, though, she sighed, and it sounded empty. Like she was prepared for disappointment. “But really, Blue. I’ve still got Nat and the paper, and you’ve got the Minutemen.” She lifted her head from the vault dweller’s shoulder to look at her squarely, and even in the dim glow of the Diamond City lights, Tuesday could see the worry in her hazel eyes. “Are you sure you still want to give this a try?”

Tuesday faced her also. “I promised you,” she reminded soberly.

Piper made a disgruntled noise, like she wasn’t convinced. “But is that what you  _ want? _ ”

Tuesday reached to take her face in both hands and  _ felt  _ the blush rise to her cheeks. “Piper Wright, I’m the Woman Out of Time. Nobody can make me do anything I don’t want to.” She saw Piper’s eyes widen, heard her breath hitch faintly in anticipation of her next words, and let a smile spread across her own face. “…and I want you.”

Piper let all the air rush out of her and her shoulders loosen in relief. Tuesday caught her as she leaned gladly into her arms. “I was hoping you’d say that,” she breathed unsteadily against the crook of the vault dweller’s neck, and then replaced her words with her lips and it was Tuesday’s turn to shudder. She wanted to share in this warmth forever. And they had forever, now, didn’t they? Or as close to it as one could find in the wasteland.

She tilted her head to allow Piper to kiss down her neck and held her tightly in return. Without really thinking about it, a soft “I love you,” slipped from her throat. The reporter shivered beneath her hands and came up to claim a proper kiss at that. Tuesday lost herself in it. 

She would be happy to do this forever. To love Piper, and let Piper love her, and keep the world safe as a side job. She had come a long way from the day she stepped out of Vault 111. She was stronger, now, and freer. She felt like she had more of a purpose now than in all her years of prewar life. It wasn’t perfect; not by a long shot, and it was nowhere close to the future she’d imagined. But she could live with it. She could grow here. She could thrive here. And maybe she could make things a little more bearable for the people around her, too. 

The future wasn’t bright, but it was clear. That’s all she could ask for.

Piper whispered back to her, “I love you, too.”

And that’s all she needed.

… 

THE END


End file.
